Prof. Sessler "Calixpyrroles and Friends"

Biography

Prof. Jonathan L. Sessler was born in Urbana, Illinois, USA on May 20, 1956. He received a B.S. degree (with Highest Honors) in chemistry in 1977 from the University of California, Berkeley. He obtained a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Stanford University in 1982 (supervisor: Professor James P. Collman). He was a NSF-CNRS and NSF-NATO Postdoctoral Fellow with Professor Jean-Marie Lehn at L’Université Louis Pasteur de Strasbourg, France. He was then a JSPS Visiting Scientist in Professor Tabushi’s group in Kyoto, Japan. In September, 1984 he accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is currently the Doherty-Welch Chair. Dr. Sessler has authored or coauthored over 1000 research publications (including over 200 in the J. Am. Chem. Soc.), written two books (with Dr. Steven J. Weghorn and Drs. Philip A. Gale and Won-Seob Cho, respectively), edited two others (with Drs. Susan Doctrow, Tom McMurry, and Stephen J. Lippard, Placido Neri and Mei-Xiang Wang), and been an inventor of record on over 90 issued U.S. Patents. Dr. Sessler was a co-founder (with Dr. Richard A. Miller) of Pharmacyclics, Inc., which was acquired by AbbVie for $21B in 2015. His texaphyrin technology is now the basis for InnovoTex, Inc., a startup based in Austin, Texas. Most recently, Dr. Sessler co-founded Supra Element Recovery.

In addition to English, Dr. Sessler speaks French reasonably well, as well as Hebrew and Spanish. He also knows a little bit of German and Japanese, and a couple words of Korean. 

Dr. Sessler’s work has been recognized with several awards, including the American Chemical Society Cope Scholar and Breslow Awards, the Royal Society of Chemistry Centenary Prize, as well as Mond-Nyholm and MASC Supramolecular Chemistry awards, the Molecular Sensors-Molecular Logic Gates Award, the CASE award, the Hans Fischer and Thomas Dougherty Awards in Photodynamic Therapy from the Society of Porphyrins and Phthalocyanines, and the C. David Gutsche Award in Calixarene Chemistry. Dr. Sessler is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Inventors, the European Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Foreign Member). 

https://sesslerlab.wixsite.com/mysite

Organizer  Giulio RAGAZZON