Join us to hear from Dirk Trauner from the University of Pennslyvania in this Distinguished Lectureship series!

Dirk Hartwig Trauner was born and raised in Linz, Austria, studied biology and chemistry at the University of Vienna, and received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from the Free University, Berlin. He then pursued graduate studies in chemistry under the direction of Johann Mulzer, with whom he moved to the University of Frankfurt and then back to Vienna, where he obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry. In 1998, he became a postdoctoral fellow with Samuel J. Danishefsky at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. After two great years in New York City, Dirk joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, where he rose through the ranks to become an Associate Professor of chemistry (with tenure) and a member of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 2008, he moved across the pond to the University of Munich as a Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Genetics. In 2017, he returned to the United States as the Janice Cutler Chair in Chemistry at New York University, and in 2022 he moved to the University of Pennsylvania to serve as a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor of Chemistry and Pharmacology.

The broad objective of Prof. Trauner’s research is to demonstrate the awesome power of chemical synthesis with challenging target molecules and to use it toward the establishment of synthetic biological pathways. He is well known for his pioneering contributions to Optogenetics and Photopharmacology, using synthetic photoswitches to confer light-sensitivity to a broad range of targets. The chemical tools his group developed are particularly useful in neuroscience and cell biology but also hold promise as precision therapeutics, e.g., for vision restoration. Despite his extensive forays into biology and physiology, Dirk remains an organic chemist at heart, as evidenced by the synthesis (and anticipation) of many beautiful natural products.

For questions, contact Brie Coyne at bcoyne@ur.rochester.edu