Ceremony of the Honorary Doctorate to be awarded to Jonathan Seth Dordick

Biography

Jonathan S. Dordick is Institute Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), with joint appointments in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Biological Sciences, Vice President for Strategic Alliances and Translation, and Co-Director of the Rensselaer-Mount Sinai Center for Engineering and Precision Medicine located in New York City. He received his B.A. degree in Biochemistry and Chemistry from Brandeis University and his Ph.D. in Biochemical Engineering from MIT. Prior to joining RPI, he was Professor of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at the University of Iowa.

Dr. Dordick has made foundational contributions to enzyme technology, microscale cell culture engineering, drug discovery and human toxicology, and biomanufacturing. He pioneered the development of enzymatic and chemoenzymatic methods for new materials synthesis, initiated the new field of molecular bioprocessing, which combines biocatalytic molecular diversity and in vitro metabolic pathway engineering with high-throughput and high-content microfluidic- and microarray-based tools to generate biologically active compounds, and greatly expanded the fundamental understanding of enzymatic catalysis in abiotic environments critical for chemical and pharmaceutical processing. Finally, he has used biomolecular discovery and engineering to address clinical translation in areas of infectious and neurological diseases, anticoagulant therapy, and highly sensitive point-of-care biosensors based on CRISPR technology.

Dr. Dordick has received numerous awards and honors, including election to the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Inventors, SBE James E. Bailey Award, Amgen Award in Biochemical and Molecular Engineering, AIChE Food, Pharmaceutical and Bioengineering Award, and ACS-BIOT Marvin J. Johnson Award, among other awards. He is Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society and American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering. He has cofounded several companies, including EnzyMed, Solidus Biosciences, Inc., Redpin Therapeutics, SynAppBio, and Lavaage, Inc. Dr. Dordick has published over 430 papers and is an inventor/co-inventor on over 50 patents and patent applications.