James B. Gloer
President (1999-2000)
James Gloer received a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Florida in 1978, and a Ph.D.
with Ken Rinehart from the Univ. Illinois in 1983. His thesis work involved the isolation and
structure elucidation of a family of novel depsipeptide anticancer agents from a marine tunicate
(didemnins). He was a postdoc at Cornell University with Jerry. Meinwald
from 1983-1984, and joined the faculty at the Univ. Iowa as an Assistant
Professor in 1984. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1990 and to
Professor in 1994, and was recently named the Roy J. Carver/Ralph L. Shriner
Professor of Chemistry. His research interests focus on the discovery, isolation,
and structure determination of new bioactive natural products from fungi, with
an emphasis on compounds having antifungal, insecticidal, and potential
anticancer effects. His program is distinguished by its emphasis on application
of ecological rationale and taxonomic considerations to the selection of target
fungi for chemical investigation. He has published some 20 papers and is a co-inventor on ten
patents. His research has been supported continuously since 1989 by grants from NSF and NIH,
as well as by the Frasch Foundation, Biotechnology Research and Development Corporation, and
other industrial sources. He has received an NIH Research Career Development Award, a
Burlington Northern Foundation Faculty Achievement Award, an NSF Grant Extension for
Special Creativity, and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, and is a Collegiate Fellow in
the Univ. Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He has served many times as an ad hoc
member of NIH review panels, and is currently a member of the editorial advisory board of J.
Nat. Prod. (JBG)