Associate Professor of Chemistry Aaron Leconte received a five-year, $400,000 Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). One of the NSF’s most esteemed awards, CAREER supports early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. Leconte teaches in the W.M. Keck Department of Pitzer, Claremont McKenna, and Scripps Colleges. With his project, “Development of DNA polymerases capable of high fidelity modified DNA synthesis,” he aims to fill a vexing gap in the science of DNA modification by engineering more resilient chemically modified versions of it.