James Halpert is a self-described cautious, methodical guy. But his career path suggests a bit of daring. He left promising undergraduate work in chemistry to travel to Europe and learn a new language. And he has uprooted himself repeatedly when eager for new challenges, a tendency that he says has benefited his scientific career. See CV

After receiving a bachelor's degree in Scandinavian languages from the University of California, Los Angeles, he took up laboratory work at a Swedish hospital, ultimately deciding to pursue biochemistry. He deciphered the amino acid sequence of a deadly snake venom neurotoxin while earning his PhD at Uppsala University. Having published several papers on natural toxins, Halpert's interest shifted to manmade toxins; he went on earn an MSc in toxicology at the Karolinska Institute.

After seven years in Sweden, Halpert returned to the United States and a postdoc at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. It was there that he began work on the cytochrome P450 superfamily, the most important element of drug metabolism and a focus that would tie together his interests in biochemistry, the environment and human health. Halpert was the first to determine how various P450s are inhibited while carrying out reactions to metabolize drugs.

“Jim's work is always at the cutting edge,” says Paul Hollenberg, a pharmacologist at the University of Michigan.

Shortly after joining the University of Arizona — where he became a professor of pharmacology and deputy director of the Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center— the junior faculty member made an important decision. “At 37, I was worried I might become a dinosaur if I didn't learn molecular biology techniques,” he says.

A move to the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston allowed Halpert to focus on structural biology and do some of the best work of his career — solving several P450 structures. Eventually, he became the director of the university's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Center.

As the new associate dean for pharmaceutical sciences at the University of California at San Diego, Halpert plans to recruit a cadre of researchers and move beyond simply training pharmacists, in part by a nascent joint PharmD/PhD programme. “We want to create researchers able to develop the next generation of drugs,” he says.