Leadership and Members

Jonathan S. Dordick, PhD

Institute Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Biological Sciences, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Dr. Dordick is the Institute Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, with joint appointments in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Biological Sciences, and an adjunct appointment at the Rockefeller University. He received his BA degree in biochemistry and chemistry from Brandeis University and his PhD in biochemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At Rensselaer, he served as the Vice President for Research, Director of the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, and Department Chair. Dr. Dordick’s research group includes chemical engineers, bioengineers, materials scientists, biologists, chemists, microbiologists, and computational scientists all focused on gaining a quantitative understanding of biological principles and applying them to advance bioengineering and biomanufacturing. He has served the biochemical engineering community as a previous chairman of the Biotechnology Division of the American Chemical Society and as an editor of Biotechnology and Bioengineering.

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 is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Inventors. He is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers. He has received numerous awards, including the James E. Bailey Award from the Society of Biological Engineering, the Amgen Award in Biochemical and Molecular Engineering, the Food, Pharmaceutical, and Bioengineering Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Marvin J. Johnson Award and Elmer Gaden Award, both of the American Chemical Society, the International Enzyme Engineering Award, and an National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award. He has cofounded several companies, including EnzyMed (now part of Albany Molecular Research, Inc.), Solidus Biosciences, Inc., and Redpin Therapeutics. He has also served on multiple White House-sponsored panels and committees in biomanufacturing. Dr. Dordick has published more than 430 papers and is an inventor/co-inventor on more than 50 patents and patent applications.