ACS International Award for Research in Agrochemicals

2019 Award Recipient

Vincent L. Salgado, a Principal Scientist at BASF Corporation in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, is being recognized for his work promoting the understanding of insecticide modes of action. 

Vince was born in Akron, Ohio, as the second of four children, and attended schools in New Jersey and Southern California. His interest in neurophysiology while an undergraduate at the University of California at Riverside brought him to the lab of Professor Thomas A. Miller, where he was inspired by the enthusiasm and dedication of the many interesting and talented people studying insects and insecticides. After obtaining his BS (1976), he spent the summer setting up a neurophysiology lab at Burroughs-Wellcome in Berkhamsted, England, where he worked with leading British insecticide researchers there and at nearby Rothamsted Experiment Station. 

Back in Riverside, Vince returned to Miller’s lab, where he obtained his PhD in Entomology (1981) working closely with postdoc Stephen N. Irving to show that like DDT and the type I pyrethroids, type II pyrethroids were working on sodium channels and not at another target, as was thought by some scientists. His postdoctoral research under Professor Toshio Narahashi at Northwestern University Medical School provided a deeper understanding of the mechanism of action of type II pyrethroids on sodium channels using axonal and single-channel voltage clamp methods. 

Vince went into the chemical industry to apply his expertise in neurophysiology and insect toxicology to the discovery of insecticides with novel modes of action. During his time at Rohm and Haas, Dow AgroSciences, Rhone-Poulenc Agro, Aventis CropScience, Bayer CropScience, and BASF, he contributed to many research projects and discoveries of novel modes of action, including block of voltage-dependent sodium channels (IRAC Group 22), allosteric modulation of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (IRAC Group 5) and, in collaboration with Professor Martin Goepfert at Goettingen University and Alexandre Nesterov and other colleagues at BASF, modulation of TRPV channels in chordotonal stretch receptor organs (IRAC Group 9). 

Vince’s work has also led to new insights into insect neurotransmitter receptors and insecticides acting on them. He defined the two major classes of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in insect nervous systems, desensitizing and non-desensitizing, which serve as targets for neonicotinoids (IRAC Group 4) and spinosyns (IRAC Group 5), respectively. With Xilong Zhao at BASF, he has also published extensively on ligand-gated chloride channels in insects, identifying two glutamate-gated chloride channel (GluCl) subtypes and demonstrating that fipronil acts on both types, in addition to its known action on GABA receptors. 

Vince has recently made groundbreaking contributions to the science of ectoparasite host-seeking and repellent action with the discovery that ticks hone in on hosts using radiant heat and that repellents potently disrupt their ability to do this. 

Vince has also contributed more broadly to the advancement of pesticide science by serving on grant review boards and the editorial board of the journal NeuroToxicology, as well as by organizing symposia at meetings of the ACS and the International Congress of Entomology. He has also helped the chemical industry’s effort to promote the sustainable use of insecticides by serving on the Insecticide Resistance Action Committee (IRAC) for more than 10 years. He has published more than 50 research articles and reviews, holds eight patents, and has mentored three graduate students and postdocs. 

In his free time, Vince enjoys woodworking, metalworking, sailing, kitesurfing, and spending time with his partner Suzanne Hixson and his two adult sons Robert and Michael.