Profile

B.S., University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, 1976. Ph.D., Harvard University, 1981 (R. B. Woodward). Postdoctoral: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1981-83 (Christopher T. Walsh). Honors and Awards: National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellowship, 1981-83; Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, 1987-89; Visiting Professor, Phillips Universität, Marburg, Germany, 1991; Visiting Professor, Harvard University, 1992, 1993. Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2010-present. At Oregon since 1983.

Bruce Branchaud has been a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oregon from 1983 to the present. He is currently Professor Emeritus. He is teaching, working on collaborative research with other faculty and co-leading the Master’s Industrial Internship Program in Organic Synthesis & Process Development.

He is an organic chemist, a bioorganic chemist and a chemical biologist. His scientific contributions over the past 3 decades have been in several areas including organic chemistry, biological chemistry, chemical biology, organometallic chemistry and nanochemistry.

Selected accomplishments include (1) several natural products total syntheses, (2) the development of coenzyme B12 model compounds for new methods in organic synthesis, (3) the study of the mechanisms of several enzymes, especially the copper-tyrosine radical enzyme galactose oxidase, (4) synthetic molecular machines, specifically synthetic organic molecular motors with directed bond rotation in a single direction, and (5) the chemistry and biology of nitrated lipids, products of oxidative metabolism of lipid unsaturated fatty acids.

In addition to his academic career, he held several leadership positions in the biotech industry from 2005 to 2011. He worked for Invitrogen then for Life Technologies. Life Technologies was formed by the merger of Invitrogen and Applied Biosystems at the end of 2008.

He was Director of Global Chemistry for Invitrogen, including leading the Molecular Probes chemistry R&D organization, 2005-2008. He then worked in Global R&D in Life Technologies, reporting directly to the Chief Scientific Officer, 2008-2011. He was a Research Fellow, Leader for Emerging Technologies–Chemistry and Chair of the Life Technologies Science Council from 2008 to 2010. He was a Research Fellow, Leader for Emerging Technologies–Chemistry, member of the Life Technologies Science Council and co-leader of S&T Intelligence in 2011.