-- Ben Shen, UC Davis assistant professor of chemistry, has been awarded one of two Matt Suffness Awards for the Year 2000, the highest honor that the American Society of Pharmacognosy bestows on young faculty in the natural products sciences. The society was founded in 1959 and is international in scope, bringing together more than 1,100 members dedicated to the promotion, growth and development of those sciences related to and dealing in natural products. Research problems in pharmacognosy -- the study of properties of drugs -- include the areas of phytochemistry, microbial chemistry, biosynthesis, biotransformation, chemotaxonomy, and other biological and chemical sciences.