Glenn Micalizio, PhD, is a leader in the field of organic synthesis, spending the last two decades developing new chemical reactions and synthesis strategies that are leveraged in-house to drive collaborative research programs focused on establishing natural product-inspired agents as therapeutically relevant compositions of matter. His efforts have resulted in over 40 new chemical reactions that have played central roles in natural product synthesis efforts conducted in his laboratory, spanning a wide variety of molecular classes (e.g., alkaloids, polyketides, and terpenoids) that pose disparate challenges to stereoselective synthesis. His research has been recognized with several awards, including the Beckman Young Investigator Award, the Lilly Grantee Award, the Sanofi Visions in Chemistry Award, the Boehringer Ingelheim Young Investigator Award, and the American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award, among others. His contributions have been shared through 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts and 120 invited lectures.
He comes to the UC Irvine Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute as the Susan and Henry Samueli Endowed Chair in Integrative Health and one of the founding members of the Robert A. Mah Molecular Innovation Center (to be located in the Falling Leaves Foundation Medical Innovation Building), where he will be developing advanced technology for natural product synthesis and leveraging that technology for collaborative drug discovery programs at UC Irvine and beyond. Micalizio previously served as the New Hampshire Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Dartmouth College (2013–2024), an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute (2008–2013), and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Yale University (2003–2005).
Prior to his independent academic career, Micalizio pursued postdoctoral study in the laboratory of Professor Stuart L. Schreiber at Harvard University as a Merck fellow of the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation (2001–2003) and completed his graduate studies in the laboratory of Professor William R. Roush at the University of Michigan where he was both a Rackham Predoctoral Fellow and a Lilly sponsored ACS Division of Organic Chemistry Fellow (PhD 2001).
