Gregory Dudley, PhD, Eberly Family Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, West Virginia University

The Department of Chemistry Presents: Gregory Dudley, PhD, Eberly Family Distinguished Professor

Synthetic chemistry fuels innovation in energy, materials, medicine, etc. — with bioactive natural products like illudalic acid long serving as inspiration for synthetic and medicinal chemistry. Illudalic acid is a potent and selective tyrosine phosphatase inhibitor that features a densely functionalized benzene ring as the platform for its core pharmacophore. This seminar will cover research in the Dudley lab revolving around illudalic acid and the illudalane family of sesquiterpene natural products. Innovations in alkyne chemistry and benzannulation methods support increasingly efficient syntheses of illudalanes and “illudalogs” (illudalic acid analogues), thereby enabling collaborative phosphatase enzymology and design and aspirational development of in vivo inhibitors. The evolution of this project with indications of future directions will be presented.

BIO

Greg Dudley is the Eberly Family Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV. Prof Dudley received a B.A. from FSU in 1995 and a Ph.D. from MIT in 2000 under the direction of Prof. Rick Danheiser. After NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship research with Prof. Samuel Danishefsky at the Sloan–Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, he returned to FSU as an Assistant Professor in 2002. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2008 and Full Professor in 2015 before moving to WVU in 2016, where he served as Department Chair until 2024. He is currently on temporary rotation as a Program Director at the National Science Foundation in Alexandria, VA, where his efforts span synthesis, physical organic chemistry, and catalysis programs. His research efforts have resulted in over 100 publications, 200 presentations, and multiple patents. The direction of his research program aims to impact drug discovery and development through innovations in molecular design and in new strategies, methods, and tools for organic synthesis. As an academic leader, Prof Dudley is committed to inclusive excellence, shared governance, and the university educational experience. He is active in science policy consulting, including working with Federal Public Defenders on criminal cases, non-profit advocacy groups on drug policy, White House attorneys on a bipartisan clemency request, and the US Sentencing Commission on the 2018 Sentencing Guidelines.