As of Sept. 1, Professor Neil Kelleher, of the Department of Chemistry, is the new director of the Chemistry of Life Processes Institute (CLP). The CLP is a center of interdisciplinary collaboration and biomedical innovation at Northwestern that aims to spur new treatments for a range of illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and complications due to organ transplantation.
Kelleher is the Walter and Mary Glass Professor of Molecular Biosciences and professor of chemistry in Weinberg College, and he has served as CLP’s interim director since January of 2021. Kelleher also is the faculty director of Northwestern Proteomics, a center of excellence within CLP, and he is the founder of the Consortium for Top-Down Proteomics, the Human Proteoform Atlas, and several start-ups, including MicroMGx and Integrated Protein Technologies.
“I look forward to partnering with CLP investigators in the coming years to tackle some of the biggest challenges in human health and disease,” Kelleher said. “This promises to be an exciting and high-impact period in the life of the institute, and I am honored to steer its mission to accelerate discovery and delivery of game-changing innovations to society.”
Kelleher joined Northwestern in 2010, and his research group focuses on top-down proteomics, chromatin biology, and natural product biosynthesis and discovery. After earning his Ph.D. from Cornell University, Kelleher taught at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign for 10 years.
He is the author of more than 300 publications and has received many honors, including the Arthur P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, Packard Fellowship, Dreyfus Award for New Investigators, Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, Lilly Analytical Chemistry Award, and National Institutes of Health Career Transition Award. Kelleher was also a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Young Investigator and a Searle Scholar, and in 2004, he received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers— the nation’s highest honor for professionals at the outset of their independent research careers.
Read more about Kelleher in Northwestern Now.