Gary A. Sulikowski, Ph.D.

Dr. Gary A. Sulikowski, Stevenson Professor of Chemistry, serves as the Associate Director of the CBID training program.

Dr. Sulikowski is Director of the CBI training program, which will ensure coordination between the two training programs. He has served as the Faculty Director of the VICB Synthesis Core since 2005, and was appointed Associate Director for Synthetic Chemistry and Deputy Director of the VICB in Spring 2011. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania under the mentorship of Amos B. Smith, III. He then pursued postdoctoral studies at Yale University under the sponsorship of Samuel J. Danishefsky with funding from an American Cancer Society research fellowship. His first faculty appointment was in the Department of Chemistry at Texas A&M University in 1991 where he rose through the ranks to Professor of Chemistry by 2001. He joined the Vanderbilt Chemistry Department as Professor of Chemistry and member of the VICB beginning with the 2004-2005 academic year. Dr. Sulikowski’s research areas are organic synthesis and chemical biology of small molecules, particularly natural products. Dr. Sulikowski serves as advisor to the Vanderbilt Specialized Chemistry Center of the NIH-sponsored Molecular Library Probe Center Network (MLPCN) and co-PI of the Vanderbilt Chemical Diversity Center of the NCI Chemical Biology Consortium (Experimental Therapeutics Program). He has served as director of the Vanderbilt CBI program since 2005 and co-PI of the Vanderbilt NSF-REU Summer Program in Chemical Biology. He has mentored over 35 graduate students and 15 postdoctoral associates during the course of 23 years as a faculty advisor. His current research group consists of 7 graduate students and 1 postdoctoral scholar.

Dr. Sulikowski has served as a member of the Study Section in Chemical & Bioanalytical Sciences at NIH and the Peer Review Committee for Cancer Drug Development of the American Cancer Society (2007-2010). Both panels review pre- and postdoctoral fellowship applications. He was also a member of the SBCA (Synthetic and Biological Chemistry) study section of the NIH (2009-2013). In 2011, he was appointed to serve on the Vanderbilt Chemical Physical Biology Program executive advisory board. He organized the 2005 10th International Conference on the Chemistry of Antibiotics and other Bioactive Compounds, and co-organized the 1st Regional Career Development Conference at the Chemistry Biology Interface.