Dr. Robert M. Williams
Brief Biographical Sketch
Robert M. Williams was born in New York in 1953 and was raised in
Huntington, Long Island by Edith and Valentine Williams. He attended
Syracuse University from 1971-1975 and received the B.A. degree in
Chemistry in 1975. While at Syracuse, he did undergraduate research
with Prof. Ei-ichi Negishi in the area of hydroboration methodology. He
then moved to Cambridge and entered the Ph.D. program at MIT and
obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1979 under the supervision of William H.
Rastetter. His doctoral studies were concerned with the total synthesis
of two fungal metabolites, gliovictin and hyalodendrin. Following
completion of his doctoral studies, he joined the laboratories of the
late Prof. R.B. Woodward in 1979 whose postdoctoral group was
subsequently managed by Professor Yoshito Kishi. His postdoctoral work
was concerned with the completion of the total synthesis of
erythromycin A. Upon completion of his postdoctoral tenure at Harvard,
he joined the faculty at Colorado State University in 1980. He was
promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 1985 and Full Professor
in 1988, his current position. Dr. Williams has received several Honors
and Awards including the NIH Research Career Development Award
(1984-1989); The Eli Lilly Young Investigator Award (1986); Fellow of
the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (1986); and the Merck, Academic
Development Award (1991). He spent a sabbatical at the University of
California, Berkeley in 1990 in the laboratories of Professor Peter G.
Schultz and was a visiting Professor at Harvard University in 1994
where he spent additional sabbatical time with Professor Stuart
Schreiber. He serves on the Editorial Board of the journal Chemistry
& Biology and is an Editor for the journal Amino Acids. Dr.
Williams is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Microcide
Pharmaceutical Co. located in Mountainview, California and is a
founding scientist, Member of the Scientific Advisory Board and Member
of the Board of Directors of CDR Therapeutics, located in Seattle,
Washington. Dr. Williams' research results from the interplay of
synthetic organic chemistry, microbiology, biochemistry and molecular
biology. Dr. Williams research interests have included the total
synthesis of natural products, studies on drug-DNA interactions, design
and synthesis of antibiotics and DNA-cleaving molecules, combinatorial
phage libraries and biosynthetic pathways. He has utilized natural
products synthesis to probe and explore biomechanistic and biosynthetic
problems with a particular emphasis on antitumor and antimicrobial
antibiotics. He has developed technology for the asymmetric synthesis
of a-amino acids which has been commercialized by Aldrich Chemical Co.
and has written a monograph on this subject. He married Jill Janssen
Williams in 1995.