New faculty member, Martin Burke, has been awarded a 2005 Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award. The award is highly competitive and provides an unrestricted research grant of $50,000. The award will help to fund his research on the synthesis and study of amphotericin B, a prototypical small molecule-based ion channel.

Professor Burke completed his undergraduate studies at Johns Hopkins University in 1998 and his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 2003. After completing his M.D. at Harvard Medical School, he joined the faculty in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois in June of 2005. His research interests are in the area of organic chemistry with a specific focus on the synthesis and study of small molecules with protein-like functions.

Dr. Burke joins a cadre of other Illinois chemistry faculty members receiving this award. Recipients for the previous 10 years are Neil Kelleher, Wilfred van der Donk, Christina White and most recently, Benjamin McCall.

The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation seeks to support the scholarly activity of new faculty with an award designed to help initiate their independent research programs in chemistry, biochemistry or chemical engineering. The New Faculty Award provides an unrestricted research grant of $50,000 that is generally made before the new faculty members formally begin their first tenure-track appointment, and is based on institutional nomination.