Karen Bush


Karen Bush is an American biochemist. She is a biology professor at Indiana University and the interim director of the university's biotechnology program. Bush conducts research focusing on bacterial resistance mechanisms to beta-lactam antibiotics.

Education

Bush received her BA, magna cum laude from Monmouth College in 1965, with a major in chemistry and a minor math-physics. In 1970 Bush graduated from Indiana University Bloomington with her Ph.D. in biochemistry under Henry R. Mahler. Bush was a postdoctoral fellow at University of California, Santa Barbara from 1970 to 1971.

Professional Career

After completing her postdoctoral research, Bush became an instructor of biochemistry in the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Medicine for a year before serving as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Delaware from 1972 to 1973. She then started an 18 year stint at The Squibb Institute for Medical Research in Princeton, NJ, spending her first 5 years in the analytical chemistry department beginning her research on beta-lactamases and beta-lactamase inhibitors. While at The Squibb Institute, Bush was part of the team that discovered Aztreonam and rose from a Research Investigator position to increasing leadership and research scientist roles, ultimately named not only a Principal Investigator but also as a Research Leader and a Research Fellow. She then went on to American Cynamid/American Home Products/Wyeth-Aherst in Pearl River NJ. Continuing her research and discovery efforts in antibiotic chemotherapy where she led teams that discovered a new carbapenem and supported the registration and launch of piperacillin-tazobactam. After a year as Director of Microbial Biochemistry at the Astra Research Center in Boston, Bush moved on to lead antibacterial discovery teams at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development, Raritan NJ from 1997 to 2009 when she became an independent consultant to a number of pharmacetical and biotechnology companies. In 2013, Bush returned academia to leading research projects, to teach and mentor graduate students, and is now a Professor of Practice in Biotechnology and the Interim Director of Biotechnology at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN.

Awards and Honors

In recognition of her outstanding research in antibiotic chemotherapy, Bush received the on November 24, 2017 at the 30th annual meeting for the International Society of Chemotherapy for Infection and Cancer, held in Taipei, Taiwan. She was the first woman to receive this award.
Within the American Society of Microbiology, she was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2000 and selected as the ICAAC Lecturer in 2004.
In 2015 she was awarded the "Excellence in Standards Award" from the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute.

Professional Activities

As a world recognized expert in the field of antibiotic discovery, Bush is involved in numerous scientific communities and services.
Bush has authored over 225 peer-reviewed publications with over 30,000 citations and an h-index of 79.She has co-authored 25 book chapters, edited a book, made over 225 scientific presented at international meetings, and been an invited speaker at over 100 scientific meetings or symposia. She is an inventor on 10 issued US patents.
Representative publications include: