Date of appointment: 23 july 2024.
By proposal of: Faculty of Biological Sciences of the University of Valencia.
Date of investiture: 6 june 2024.
Sponsor: Ismael Mingarro and Isabel Fariñas.
William (Bill) DeGrado’s work focuses on the design of small molecule drugs, peptides, and proteins to address biological and mechanistic questions. Since 2011, Bill has been a professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California San Francisco. Prior to UCSF, he was a member of DuPont Central Research and DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Company from 1981 to 1996, and with Professor Raiziss in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania (1996 – 2011). He graduated from Kalamazoo College in 1978, received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Chicago (1981), and joined DuPont Central Research without an intervening postdoctoral position.
Bill is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Science, the Academy of Inventors, and he has received the top awards from the Protein Society (Stein & Moore Award) and the Peptide Society (Merrifield Award). He has also received the Scott award, given by the city of Philadelphia, which is the oldest scientific award in the U.S.
Bill lives in San Francisco with his wife Susan. He has two sons, Jessie and Joey.
