Donald F. Hunt, PhD (Bio)

2024 Recipient: Neil Kelleher, Northwestern University

Neil L. Kelleher, PhD is the Walter and Mary Glass Professor of Molecular Biosciences and professor of chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. He also is director of the 50-person Proteomics Center of Excellence, Director of the Chemistry of Life Processes and a member of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University. His research is focused in the areas of top-down proteomics, natural products discovery, and cancer biology. With >450 papers, Dr. Kelleher is a cross-disciplinary investigator with international impact in proteomics (the study of proteins). 

Together with colleagues in a research consortium (https://www.topdownproteomics.org/), this emerging approach to measure proteins with complete molecular specificity is being advanced to improve the detection and assignment of function to protein modifications and complexes. Now with an H-factor of 89, Kelleher has mentored over 52 Ph.D. students, >200 postdoctoral scholars, and >200 undergraduates.

After a breakthrough Nature paper in 2011, Kelleher has continued to push the boundaries of proteomics and is currently advancing a compositional map of proteins in all cell types of the human body.  This “domestication” of the human proteome via precise compositional mapping will improve the efficiency of basic and clinical research and therefore enhance diverse goals for the 21st Century, including designer organs, personalized medicine, and early detection of human disease.