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Professor van der Donk received his B.S. from Leiden University in the Netherlands in 1989 and his Ph.D. from Rice University in 1994. He went on to postdoctoral work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining the faculty at the University of Illinois in 1997. In 2008, he was appointed as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His research interests encompass organic chemistry and chemical biology, focusing on the discovery and design of new antibiotics and natural products. His projects involve synthetic organic and protein chemistry to address problems at the interface of chemistry and biology. His work is particularly relevant given the rising prevalence of multi-drug resistant bacterial strains, calling for a renewed focus on antibiotic research to find new drugs and alternative therapeutic targets. He aims to uncover novel cyclic peptides with therapeutic potential and employs genome mining strategies to discover new natural products. This approach leverages the genetic encoding of amino acid sequences for site-directed mutagenesis and access to analogs, making his research pivotal in the quest for effective antimicrobial agents.
University of Illinois • Urbana, IL
Joined faculty and focused on research in organic chemistry and chemical biology.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute • Urbana, IL
Appointed as investigator to enhance research in antibiotic discovery.
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