Martin Burke

Marty grew up dreaming of becoming a doctor or a major league baseball player. The Orioles never called, but Johns Hopkins University did, and so he jumped at the chance. At Hopkins, he also discovered a passion for chemistry and its interface with human health. So he next moved to Boston/Cambridge to pursue science and medicine in parallel at Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, and MIT. He is now a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Marty’s lab is pioneering the development of molecular prosthetics, small molecules that serve as functional surrogates for missing proteins. To enable this research, he has developed a powerful Lego-like approach for making small molecules involving the iterative assembly of MIDA boronate building blocks, an approach that underlies Revolution Medicines’ product engine. Leveraging this platform, his group has synthesized, understood, and/or improved a variety of complex natural products that perform protein-like functions. This includes discovering the mechanism of action of amphotericin B and an atomistic roadmap to improving its therapeutic index.

He holds a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University, Ph.D. from Harvard University, and M.D. from Harvard Medical School and MIT.