Tetrahedron Symposium Speaker Biography

Donald Hilvert

Donald Hilvert obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1983 from Columbia University.  Following postdoctoral work at Rockefeller University, he joined the faculty of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California in 1986 as an Assistant Professor.  He was subsequently promoted to associate Professor in 1989 and full Professor in 1994.  In 1995, he was named the Janet and W. Keith Kellogg II Professor of Chemistry and an affiliate of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at Scripps.  Since October 1997, he has been Professor in the Laboratory of Organic Chemistry at the ETH Zurich (Zurich, Switzerland).  Professor Hilvert’s research program focuses on understanding how enzymes work and evolve and on mimicking the properties of these remarkable catalysts in the laboratory.  These efforts have been recognized by a number of awards, including the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society and the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry.