People of ASP

Chris Ireland received his B.A. from the University of California at San Diego and his Ph.D. from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He joined the faculty of the Univ. Utah as an Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in 1983. His current appointment is Professor and Chair, Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Adjunct Professor of Chemistry. He has established himself as a world leader in natural product drug discovery, focusing on antitumor agents from natural product sources, including marine invertebrate animals, tropical plants, and fungi. He and his co-workers have published over 150 peer reviewed research articles, eight book chapters and five patents. He has been invited to speak at many national and international symposia and has served as Chair of the Marine Natural Products Gordon Conference and the organizing committee of two highly successful ASP meetings (Park City 1987, San Diego 1993), as well as on a number of review panels at NIH, and most recently as an ad hoc member of the Board of Scientific Counselors. His awards include an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, an NIH Career Development Award, and several from the University and State of Utah for research and teaching excellence. He has been awarded over $20 million research funding from agencies including the NIH (including NCDDG and ICBG), the US Dept. of Commerce, the Petroleum Research Fund and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and was recognized (2007) for being in the top 5 percentile for NIH funding worldwide for the past two decades. He has served on the board of directors and/or scientific advisory boards of six US biotechnology companies and as a senior consultant to Wyeth Research. (CI)