Steven Charles Zimmerman is an American organic chemist who is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Early life and education

He was born in Chicago in 1957, the second son of the organic chemist

Howard Zimmerman Howard E. Zimmerman (July 5, 1926 – February 12, 2012) was a professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1980 and the recipient of the 1986 American Institute of Chemist ...

.Zeng, F.; Zimmerman, S. C. "Dendrimers in supramolecular chemistry: from molecular recognition to self-assembly," Chem. Rev. 1997, 97, 1681-1712. He attended public schools in Madison, Wisconsin where he received a B.S. degree in 1979 working for Hans J. Reich. In 1983 he received a Ph.D. at Columbia University in New York City where he worked with

Ronald Breslow Ronald Charles David Breslow (March 14, 1931 – October 25, 2017) was an American chemist from Rahway, New Jersey. He was University Professor at Columbia University, where he was based in the Department of Chemistry and affiliated with the De ...

pyridoxamine Pyridoxamine is one form of vitamin B6, vitamin B6. Chemically it is based on a pyridine ring structure, with hydroxyl, methyl, aminomethyl, and hydroxymethyl substituents. It differs from pyridoxine by the substituent at the 4-position. The hydro ...

enzyme analogs.

Career

After an NSF-NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Cambridge with Sir

Alan R. Battersby Sir Alan Rushton Battersby (4 March 1925 – 10 February 2018) was an English organic chemist best known for his work to define the chemical intermediates in the biosynthetic pathway to vitamin B12 and the reaction mechanisms of the enzymes invo ...

, he joined the faculty at the University of Illinois (1985). He was appointed the Roger Adams Professor of Chemistry at the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univ ...

in 2004, having previously held a William H. and Janet G. Lycan Professorship.

Administrator

Zimmerman served as the Head of th
University of Illinois Department of Chemistry
from 1999 to 2000 and 2005 to 2012. As Department Head he managed an academic staff of 115 full-time equivalents (FTE) with a State budget of $8.4 M and total expenditures of $26.7M, including federal research grants and contracts.Figures from 2009 provided by the University of Illinois, Division of Management Information database, Urbana, Illinois. He oversaw a $60M fundraising campaign and secured the three largest individual gifts (>$15M total) at the University of Illinois in academic year 2007.Des Garennes, Christine, "Deferred and Outright Gifts to the U of I," The News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana, IL), September 29, 2007. He negotiated and oversaw a cooperative agreement to port the University of Illinois Department of Chemistry undergraduate curriculum to the Hanoi University of Science in Vietnam, increased standards for graduate enrollment, and increased the diversity of the faculty, staff, and student body.

Research

His early research was focused on molecular recognition, models of serine proteases, and topologically novel

DNA intercalator In biochemistry, intercalation is the insertion of molecules between the planar bases of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). This process is used as a method for analyzing DNA and it is also the basis of certain kinds of poisoning. There are several ...

s. He and his coworkers pioneered the development of a new class of nonmacrocyclic molecular hosts called molecular tweezers, also called more recently, molecular clips. His current work focuses on

dendrimers Dendrimers are highly ordered, branched polymeric molecules. Synonymous terms for dendrimer include arborols and cascade molecules. Typically, dendrimers are symmetric about the core, and often adopt a spherical three-dimensional morphology. The ...

, including their supramolecular chemistryZimmerman, S. C.; Wendland, M. S.; Rakow, N. A.; Zharov, I.; Suslick, K. S. "Synthetic hosts by monomolecular imprinting inside dendrimers," Nature 2002, 418, 399-403. and the supramolecular chemistry of other polymers (supramolecular polymer chemistry).

Awards and achievements

*Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science *Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, American Chemical Society *Buck-Whitney Award, Eastern New York Section of American Chemical Society *

Presidential Young Investigator Award The Presidential Young Investigator Award (PYI) was awarded by the National Science Foundation of the United States Federal Government. The program operated from 1984 to 1991, and was replaced by the NSF Young Investigator (NYI) Awards and Presiden ...

, National Science Foundation *Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship *Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award *Cyanamid Academic Award *Eli Lilly Grantee *American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Award

References

External links

Dr. Steven C. Zimmerman's Current ResearchDr. Steven C. Zimmerman's Research Group Webpage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zimmerman, Steven C. Living people 1957 births University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty Organic chemists Columbia University alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni