Dr. Glenn Micalizio has joined the UC Irvine School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences’ Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences as a professor and the Susan & Henry Samueli Endowed Chair in Integrative Health. He is also a founding member of the Robert A. Mah Molecular Innovation Center, which will be located in the Falling Leaves Foundation Medical Innovation Building.
A native of northeastern New Jersey, Dr. Micalizio earned his BS in Chemistry from Ramapo College of New Jersey. As an undergraduate student, he also worked for Ciba-Geigy Pharmaceuticals, an experience that built on an existing interest in pharmaceutical sciences.
“I developed a curiosity for drug discovery and development early in life, seeing both of my parents battle significant illness through my teenage years,” shared Dr. Micalizio, who went on to complete his graduate studies at the University of Michigan (as a Rackham Predoctoral Fellow and a Lilly-sponsored ACS Division of Organic Chemistry Fellow) and postdoctoral studies at Harvard University (as a Merck Fellow of the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation).
“As a young researcher, I became intensely interested in the molecular science associated with the laboratory construction of active pharmaceutical ingredients,” he said. “I fell in love with the idea that advances in chemical synthesis can have a profound impact in biomedical science because such advances can provide a means of searching for therapeutics that weren’t previously possible or practical.”
Dr. Micalizio is a leader in synthetic organic chemistry research, a discipline that is central to constructing new molecules primarily comprising intricately connected networks of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms. His work has produced approximately 40 new chemical reactions — innovation that is foundational to drug discovery. His research has been recognized with the Beckman Young Investigator Award, Lilly Grantee Award, Sanofi Visions in Chemistry Award, Boehringer Ingelheim Young Investigator Award, American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award, and more.
Prior to joining UCI, he served as the New Hampshire Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Dartmouth College from 2013 to 2024, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute from 2008 to 2013, and an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at Yale University from 2003 to 2008.
Dr. Micalizio is the first designated Endowed Chair in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences. As part of a $2,000,000 gift made by the Samuelis in 2017, the Susan & Henry Samueli Endowed Chair in Integrative Health is one of up to 15 faculty chair positions created across the medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and population and public health disciplines at UCI for senior, midcareer, and junior faculty with expertise in integrative health.
In his role as Endowed Chair, Dr. Micalizio will spearhead the advancement of natural product synthesis technology and collaborative drug discovery programs at UCI.
“UCI feels like a perfect fit for my research program, and I look forward to working alongside colleagues in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Department of Chemistry. It is particularly exciting to position my program in an environment closely connected to the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute, and the UCI Center for Neurotherapeutics,” he stated. “As I settle in, my program is already beginning to establish collaborative links with several research groups on campus focused on various aspects of biomedical research. I look forward to a bright future for small molecule therapeutic discovery stemming from the efforts that student researchers will make in my laboratory.”
