Marty Burke

Marty received a PhD and MD from Harvard University and is the May and Ving Lee Professor for Chemical Innovation at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. The Burke group is pioneering the field of “molecular prosthetics”—small molecules that mimic the functions of deficient proteins that underlie a wide range of human diseases, including cystic fibrosis and anemia. This work also yielded a Lego-like platform for automated molecular synthesis that is expanding access to this and many other societally impactful molecular functions, and hundreds of commercially available MIDA boronate building blocks that are used in many different academic and industrial institutions throughout the world. He is also the founder of four biotechnology companies – REVOLUTION Medicines, Ambys Medicines, Sfunga Therapeutics, and cystetic Medicines, and developed a platform called SHIELD for mitigating SARS-CoV-2 transmission via rapid-result COVID-19 saliva tests.