Livia S. Eberlin, a chemist at the University of Texas, is a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation's $625,000 fellowship award.

Livia S. Eberlin, an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Texas who led a research team that developed a pen-sized device to detect cancer, was named Thursday as a MacArthur fellow, a prestigious award that includes a $625,000, no-strings-attached grant.

She was among 25 people singled out for the honor by the Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The genius award, as it is colloquially known, goes to "extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential," according to the foundation.

"I'm having a hard time believing it," Eberlin told the American-Statesman. "I still think they might have called the wrong number. I had no idea I was even being considered."

She reprised that unpretentious attitude at a gathering of many of her colleagues, who toasted her with champagne. "I'm really thankful and honored and humbled. I'm not a genius," she said.

UT President Gregory L. Fenves would perhaps beg to differ. “Dr. Eberlin’s research places her at the vanguard of a worldwide effort to fight cancer,” he said. "It’s truly an honor to have her as a member of the UT faculty.”

The MacArthur Foundation's selection process is highly secretive. The foundation enlists a constantly changing pool of nominators as well as a panel of about a dozen leaders in the arts, sciences, humanities, for-profit world and nonprofit community to evaluate nominations. All serve anonymously.

The award is paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years. Fellows are free to spend or invest the money as they wish.

"I'm pretty happy it's not a one-time cash thing because this way you can be more responsible," Eberlin said, adding that she will probably use the money for a combination of personal and professional matter. She and her husband, Nathan Sanders, a research scientist at Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., have young children who are 1, 2 and 4.



Eberlin, 32, joined UT's faculty three years ago. Last year, a team of scientists and engineers led by her published findings announcing the invention of a handheld tool, dubbed the MassSpec Pen, that identifies cancerous tissue in about 10 seconds, helping surgeons ensure that they remove all of the cancer while preserving healthy tissue.

The current method for determining the boundary between cancer and normal tissue during surgery, called frozen section analysis, can take 30 minutes or more and can yield unreliable results in as many as 20 percent of cases for some types of cancer. The MassSpec Pen was more than 96 percent accurate in testing tissue removed from cancer patients, according to the team's report in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

The device uses a chemical analysis technique, called mass spectrometry, to detect cancerous and healthy tissue at the molecular level. Eberlin, who was born and raised in Campinas, in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, began researching mass spectrometry while an undergraduate at the State University of Campinas and continued to develop skills and insights as a Ph.D. student at Purdue University, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University and a tenure-track faculty member in Austin.

Armed with a grant from the National Institutes of Health, she started on the MassSpec Pen project right after arriving at UT. "I was really fortunate to work with incredible people at UT who contributed a lot to this," including Jialing Zhang, a researcher in her lab, and Thomas Milner, a professor of biomedical engineering. All told, her research team numbered 20 people, including undergraduate and graduate students at UT and specialists at UT's Dell Medical School, the Baylor College of Medicine and the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Part of the challenge was making the device sufficiently user-friendly so that a Ph.D.-level researcher wouldn't have to operate it, Eberlin said. Pilot clinical testing began in recent weeks at the Texas Medical Center in Houston, and formal clinical trials, possibly followed by government approval to commercialize the device, are years down the road, she said.

Eberlin said she is driven by the desire to solve problems in human health. "That's the final goal," she said. "Are the tools we're developing going to impact clinical care?"

Paul M. Goldbart, dean of natural sciences, noted that Eberlin is the first person at UT to be named a MacArthur fellow this century. Seven other UT faculty members have previously been named MacArthur fellows: David Hillis, a professor of integrative biology, in 1999; Jacqueline Jones, history, 1999; Nancy Moran, integrative biology, 1997; Philip Uri Treisman, mathematics, 1992; Thomas G. Palaima, classics, 1985; Nora C. England, linguistics, 1983; and Karen K. Uhlenbeck, professor emerita in mathematics, 1983.

Besides the jolt to one's bank account, the award can redirect a career. For example, the announcement of Palaima's award prompted UT to recruit him more than 30 years ago, shortly after turning down his application for a faculty position. "That gave me a sense of the whimsy of life," he told the Statesman in 2006.