Frontiers in Pharmaceutical Sciences Lecture Series - No. 202

Topic：Microbial natural product discovery and diversification: New tools and applications

Speaker：Prof. Jon Thorson, Director of Center for Pharmaceutical Research and Innovation, College of Pharmacy, University of Kentucky

Chair：Prof. Ding Li, School of Pharmaceutical Science, SYSU

Time：Tuesday, December 9^th, 2014, 10:30 AM

Venue：125 Lecture Hall, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, East Campus, SYSU

Introduction to the speaker:

Professor Jon Thorson received his B.A. degree in chemistry (1986) from Augsburg College and Ph.D. degree in organic chemistry (1993) from University of Minnesota with Professor Hung-wen (Ben) Liu. He held a postdoctoral appointment as a Merck Postdoctoral Fellow (1993-1996) at University of California, Berkeley with Professor Peter Schultz. In 1996-2001, Professor Thorson held appointments as an assistant member of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and assistant professor at Cornell University. In 2001, Professor Thorson moved to University of Wisconsin School of Pharmacy. Professor Thorson joined University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy in the Fall of 2011 where he serves as the director of the Pharmaceutical Research and Innovation. Professor Thorson’s research interests include understanding and exploiting biosynthetic pathways and enzyme mechanisms, bioorganic and chemoselective ligation chemistries, enzyme engineering and evolution, natural products discovery and bioprospecting. Professor Thorson received many awards, including NIH MERIT Award, Brainerd Distinguished Achievement Award, Matt Suffness Young Investigator Award, etc. Professor Thorson published hundreds of papers in prestigious journals including Science, Nature, PNAS, JACS, etc.

All are welcome to the lecture!