User:Chemweb/Wilfred van der Donk

Professor Wilfred van der Donk is the Richard E. Heckert Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator, appointed in 2008. His research program focuses on the discovery and design of new antibiotics and anti-inflammatory agents. These projects combine synthetic organic, and protein chemistry to address problems at the interface of chemistry and biology.

Education
Professor van der Donk received his B.S. from Leiden University, the Netherlands, in 1989 and his Ph.D. from Rice University in 1994. He went on to do postdoctoral work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and joined the faculty at Illinois in 1997. In 2008, he was appointed as an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Research Focus
Dr. van der Donk's research focuses currently upon two antibiotics that have not been heavily studied for use in humans. One group of antibiotics, lantibiotics, have been used most prominently in food preservation. Over the decades that lantibiotics have been in use, microbes have yet to develop significant resistance to the drug.

Van der Donk has already enjoyed success with this line of research. One of the enzymes he studied has already been licensed to several pharmaceutical companies for development.

Awards and Achievements

 * 2009 RSC Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry Lecture Award
 * 2009 OBC Lecture Award
 * 2008 Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
 * Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award in Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Cope Scholar Award
 * University Scholar, UIUC
 * Pfizer Award
 * Helen Corley Petit Award
 * Burroughs-Wellcome New Investigator Award
 * Beckman Young Investigator Award
 * Research Corporation Innovation Award
 * Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship
 * Cottrell Scholar
 * Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar