Martin Burke

Dr. Martin D. Burke is the May and Ving Lee Professor for Chemical Innovation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the founding Director of the Molecular Maker Lab and a co-founder of the Molecule Maker Lab Institute. He also helped launch the Carle Illinois College of Medicine and served as its inaugural Associate Dean of Research. Dr. Burke discovered chemistry that machines can do. His lab specifically pioneered blocc chemistry - the iterative synthesis of small molecules (chemical matter primarily built from carbon-carbon bonds) using MIDA/TIDA boronate building blocks, an approach that is friendly to automation, non-specialists, and AI. More than 300 of these building blocks are now commercially available and have been used in hundreds of labs worldwide to make a wide array of natural products, pharmaceuticals, herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, diagnostic probes, catalysts, coatings, quantum dots, carbohydrate sensors, and many other functional small molecules. These applications have been reported in over 1,000 publications, including more than 300 patent applications. In his own lab, Dr. Burke leveraged this block chemistry approach to develop the field of molecular prosthetics, yield new drug candidates for cystic fibrosis (now in clinical trials) and anemia, define the sterol sponge mechanism by which glycosylated polyene macrolide natural products kill eukaryotic cells which led to renal sparing antifungal candidates for treating invasive fungal infections (now in clinical trials), and to enable AI-guided closed-loop discovery of record-breaking organic lasers and mechanistic insights underlying the stability of organophotovoltaic materials. To accelerate the real-world impact of this work, Dr. Burke has co-founded multiple biotechnology companies - including REVOLUTION Medicines, Sfunga Therapeutics (now Elion Therapeutics), and cystetic Medicines - which have collectively advanced seven drug candidates into clinical trials. Dr. Burke received his undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Johns Hopkins University, a PhD in Organic Chemistry from Harvard University, and an MD from Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Additional honors include the ACS Cope Scholar Award, ACS Elias J. Corey Award in Organic Synthesis, Hirata Gold Medal, Mukaiyama Award, the University of Illinois Presidential Medallion, and the ACS Nobel Laureate Signature Award for Graduate Education in Chemistry. He has also been repeatedly recognized as a “Teacher Ranked as Excellent” by the University of Illinois.