Sylvie Doublié, Ph.D., a structural biologist and biochemist and professor in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, was invested as the inaugural holder of the Green and Gold Professorship in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics on January 12, 2026, at a formal ceremony at the Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine at the University of Vermont. A medallion honoring this achievement was presented by Richard. L. Page, M.D., dean of the Larner College of Medicine and chief medical affairs officer at UVM, and Beth Kirkpatrick, M.D., chair of the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.

“Dr. Doublié is an unsurpassed scientific contributor in the field of DNA damage and repair, a valued educator and mentor, and an outstanding university citizen. I cannot think of a better person to serve as the inaugural Green and Gold Professor in MMG.” — Beth Kirkpatrick, M.D.

Dr. Doublié’s academic journey began at the University of Paris and took her to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied the mechanism of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases and received a Ph.D. in biochemistry and biophysics. After two postdoctoral fellowships at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Grenoble, France, and Harvard Medical School, she joined the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at UVM as an assistant professor in 1998. She was named associate professor in 2004 and became a full professor in 2009. In 2014 she was honored as UVM University Scholar and in 2022 she was named Research Laureate at the UVM Larner College of Medicine. She is an elected member of the Vermont Academy of Sciences and a member of the Academy's Board of Directors.

Doublié is internationally recognized for her elegant structural biology research combining biochemistry and X-ray crystallography to illuminate fundamental cellular mechanisms underpinning important questions in protein/nucleic acid interactions, especially in DNA replication and repair. She has a particular interest in methods used for determining structure, and her papers describing seleno-methionine substitution in the process of structure determination are highly cited. Throughout her career in structural biology, Doublié and her team have solved more than 89 separate structures.

“Dr. Doublié is an unsurpassed scientific contributor in the field of DNA damage and repair, a valued educator and mentor, and an outstanding university citizen. I cannot think of a better person to serve as the inaugural Green and Gold Professor in MMG,” said Dr. Kirkpatrick.

The Green and Gold Professorship in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics was established through the generosity of a donor who wishes to remain anonymous; however, they shared the following remarks: “It is an honor for our foundation to endow the first Green and Gold Professorship in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics. We chose this department because the field of genetics and genomics has been central to one of the director’s 40-year career in academia, in part, due to undergraduate experiences at UVM. Supporting exceptional faculty who have tremendous potential is what makes our public universities great.”

An endowed professorship is one of the highest honors the university can bestow upon a faculty member. At the Larner College of Medicine, named professorships are critical in marking the successful trajectory of high-achieving faculty members. By providing dedicated resources for research and scholarly opportunities, these positions enable the college’s most gifted faculty to excel, help the college recognize its most distinguished researchers, scientists, clinicians, and physicians, and recruit and retain leaders in medicine.