Paul J. Hergenrother is an American chemist and the Kenneth L. Rinehart Jr. Endowed Chair in Natural Products chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. [1] His research focuses on the development of organic small molecules with novel biological properties such as enzyme inhibitors and activators, chemotherapeutics, and antibacterial agents. In 2008 Hergenrother was awarded the Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry.
Hergenrother attended college at University of Notre Dame. In 1999, Hergenrother earned his PhD in chemistry from the University of Texas, where he worked in the lab of Professor Stephen F. Martin.
From 1999 to 2001, Hergenrother completed an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University in the lab of Professor Stuart Schreiber. [2] In 2001, Hergenrother became a faculty member in the department of chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Web of Science lists 215 publications authored by Hergenrother in peer-reviewed scientific journals that have been cited over 8000 times. [3] His three most cited research articles have been cited >200 times each. [4] [5]
Robert William Holley was an American biochemist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 for describing the structure of alanine transfer RNA, linking DNA and protein synthesis.
Stuart Schreiber is an American chemist who is the Morris Loeb Research Professor at Harvard University, a co-founder of the Broad Institute, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, Emeritus, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine. He currently leads Arena BioWorks.
PAC-1 is a synthesized chemical compound that selectively induces apoptosis, in cancerous cells. It was granted orphan drug status by the FDA in 2016.
Steven Charles Zimmerman is an American organic chemist who is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Martin Gruebele is a German-born American physical chemist and biophysicist who is currently emeritus James R. Eiszner Chair in Chemistry, Professor of Physics, Professor of Biophysics and Computational Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
M. Christina White is a professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research in the field of organometallic catalysis focuses on developing highly selective carbon–hydrogen bond activation methods to streamline the process of complex molecule synthesis.
Phenotypic screening is a type of screening used in biological research and drug discovery to identify substances such as small molecules, peptides, or RNAi that alter the phenotype of a cell or an organism in a desired manner. Phenotypic screening must be followed up with identification and validation, often through the use of chemoproteomics, to identify the mechanisms through which a phenotypic hit works.
The Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry was established in 1934. Consisting of a bronze medal and honorarium, its purpose is to stimulate fundamental research in biological chemistry by scientists not over thirty-eight years of age. The Award is administered by the Division of Biological Chemistry of the American Chemical Society.
Jeffrey Scott Moore is the Murchison-Mallory Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He has received awards for both teaching and research, and as of 2014, was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. In 2017, he was named director of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois, after serving as Interim Director for one year.
CatherineJ. Murphy is an American chemist and materials scientist, and is the Larry Faulkner Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). The first woman to serve as the head of the department of chemistry at UIUC, Murphy is known for her work on nanomaterials, specifically the seed-mediated synthesis of gold nanorods of controlled aspect ratio. She is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.
Martin D. Burke is the May and Ving Lee Professor for Chemical Innovation at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and Associate Dean of Research in the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. His research has involved the development of antifungal treatments for cystic fibrosis, and the development of a COVID-19 test that the University of Illinois has used over one million times.
Nancy Makri is the Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Endowed Professor of Chemistry and Physics at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, where she is the principal investigator of the Makri Research Group for the theoretical understanding of condensed phase quantum dynamics. She studies theoretical quantum dynamics of polyatomic systems, and has developed methods for long-time numerical path integral simulations of quantum dissipative systems.
Michael J. Sofia is a chemist whose main research focus is hepatitis C virus and hepatitis B virus drug discovery. He was a co-recipient of the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for his work on hepatitis C in 2016 and of the Gertrude B. Elion Memorial Award from the International Society for Antiviral Research in 2017.
Jonathan V Sweedler is an American chemist specializing in bioanalytical chemistry, neurochemistry and cell to cell biology and behavior. He is the James R. Eiszner Family Endowed Chair in Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Additionally, he holds a faculty appointment in the Beckman Institute. He is also an Elected Fellow to the American Chemical Society, for which he is also the society's Editor in Chief for the journal Analytical Chemistry.
John Albert Katzenellenbogen is an American Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He studies the development of novel agents for the treatment of hormone-responsive and non-responsive breast and prostate cancers and the design of estrogens and antiestrogens that have a favorable balance of beneficial versus detrimental effects.
Bradley Lether Pentelute is currently a professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His research program lies at the intersection of chemistry and biology and develops bioconjugation strategies, cytosolic delivery platforms, and rapid flow synthesis technologies to optimize the production, achieve site-specific modification, enhance stability, and modulate function of a variety of bioactive agents. His laboratory successfully modified proteins via cysteine-containing “pi-clamps” made up of a short sequence of amino acids, and delivered large biomolecules, such as various proteins and drugs, into cells via the anthrax delivery vehicle. Pentelute has also made several key contributions to automated synthesis technologies in flow. These advances includes the invention of the world's fastest polypeptide synthesizer. This system is able to form amide bonds at a more efficient rate than standard commercial equipment and has helped in the process of understanding protein folding and its mechanisms. This automated flow technology was recently used to achieve total chemical synthesis of protein chains up to 164 amino acids in length that retained the structure and function of native variants obtained by recombinant expression. The primary goal of his endeavor is to use these processes to create designer biologics that can be used to treat diseases and solve the manufacturing problem for on-demand personalized therapies, such as cancer vaccines.
Sara E. Skrabalak is a James H. Rudy Professor at Indiana University. Skrabalak leads a research group in the department of chemistry which focuses on the development of new nanomaterials. She has an adjunct appointment in the department of intelligent systems engineering.
B. Jill Venton is a professor of chemistry at University of Virginia, where she serves as the department chair since 2019. Venton's research focuses on developing analytical chemistry methods to enable detection of molecules in the brain.
Benjamin List is a German chemist who is one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research and professor of organic chemistry at the University of Cologne. He co-developed organocatalysis, a method of accelerating chemical reactions and making them more efficient. He shared the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with David MacMillan "for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis".
Christy F. Landes is an American physical chemist who is the Jerry A. Walker Endowed Chair in chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She previously was the Kenneth S. Pitzer-Schlumberger Chair at Rice University. She seeks to understand the structure-function relationships in biological processes and materials. She was appointed a National Academy of Sciences Kavli Fellow in 2019.