William F. DeGrado, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at UCSF, where he is also a member of the Cardiovascular Research Institute. Before joining UCSF in 2011, he was a member of DuPont Central Research and DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Company and the George W. Raiziss Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. DeGrado is a member of the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Inventors, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and past President of the Protein Society. Dr. DeGrado’s research interests include de novo design of proteins and peptides; peptide mimetics; structure/function of membrane proteins, including integrins and viral ion channels; small molecule drug design; and bioinorganic chemistry. He was the first to successfully design and construct a protein “from scratch” and pioneered the design of peptides that not only fold into protein-like structures but also incorporate desired functionalities. Dr. DeGrado graduated from Kalamazoo College and holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Chicago. He joined the DuPont Central Research without an intervening postdoctoral position.