Dr. Martin Burke is the May and Ving Lee Professor for Chemical Innovation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the founding Director of the Molecular Maker Lab and a co-founder of the Molecule Maker Lab Institute.^[3] He also helped launch the Carle Illinois College of Medicine and served as its inaugural Associate Dean of Research.

Burke discovered chemistry that machines can do. His lab specifically pioneered the modular synthesis of small molecules with MIDA/TIDA boronate building blocks, an approach that is friendly to automation, non-specialists, and AI. More than 300 of these building blocks are now commercially available, and they have been used by hundreds of other labs worldwide to help identify many different types of natural products, pharmaceuticals, herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, diagnostic probes, catalysts, anti-corrosive coatings, quantum dots, carbohydrate sensors, and a wide range of materials, collectively yielding >1000 publications including >300 patents. In his own lab, Burke leveraged this modular chemistry approach to develop the field of molecular prosthetics yielding new drug candidates for cystic fibrosis (now in clinical trials) and anemia, define the sterol sponge mechanism by which glycosylated polyene macrolide natural products kill eukaryotic cells which led to renal sparing antifungal candidates for treating invasive fungal infections (now in clinical trials), and to enable AI-guided closed-loop discovery of top-in-class organic lasers and mechanistic insights underlying the stability of organophotovoltaic materials. Burke is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Leveraging the broad potential of this modular approach, Burke (co)-founded multiple biotechnology companies, including REVOLUTION Medicines, Sfunga Therapeutics (now Elion Therapeutics), and cystetic Medicines, which have collectively advanced 7 drug candidates into clinical trials.

Burke was born on February 5, 1976, in Westminster, Maryland.^[4] Burke studied chemistry as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University, graduating in 1998 with his B.A. in Chemistry. While an undergraduate, he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Undergraduate Research Fellow, and he conducted research with Professors Henry Brem and Gary H. Posner on derivatives of calcitriol as potential drug candidates.^[5][6] Burke went on to Harvard University, where he earned a Ph.D. and M.D. in 2003 and 2005, respectively. Burke conducted his Ph.D. thesis work with Professor Stuart L. Schreiber on the diversity-oriented synthesis of small molecules with diverse skeletons.^[7][8][9]

He joined the Department of Chemistry in 2005 as an Assistant Professor, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011, then to full Professor in 2014. He was appointed Associate Dean of Research of the Carle-Illinois College of Medicine in 2018.^[4][10] In response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, Burke was appointed to lead the University of Illinois' SHIELD initiative to protect the community with testing. A collaborative effort between Burke and Paul J. Hergenrother led to the development of a saliva test called covidSHIELD for COVID-19 that has been used over 1 million times in the campus community.^[11]

The Burke Group discovered chemistry that machines can do.^[12][13] The Burke lab specifically pioneered the modular synthesis of small molecules with MIDA/TIDA boronate building blocks,^[14][15] an approach that is friendly to automation,^{[16][17][18][19]} non-specialists,^[20] and AI.^{[21][22][23][24]} More than 300 of these building blocks are now commercially available, and they have been used by hundreds of other labs worldwide to help identify many different types of natural products, pharmaceuticals, herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, diagnostic probes, catalysts, anti-corrosive coatings, quantum dots, carbohydrate sensors, and a wide range of materials, collectively yielding >1000 publications including >300 patents. In his own lab, Burke leveraged this modular chemistry approach to develop the field of molecular prosthetics yielding new drug candidates for cystic fibrosis^{[25][26][27][28][29][30]} (now in clinical trials) and anemia,^[31][32][33] define the sterol sponge mechanism^{[34][35][36][37]} by which glycosylated polyene macrolide natural products kill eukaryotic cells which led to a renal sparing antifungal candidate AM-2-19/SF001 for treating invasive fungal infections^[38] (now in clinical trials), and to enable AI-guided closed-loop discovery of top-in-class organic lasers^[39] and mechanistic insights underlying the stability of organophotovoltaic materials.^[40] Leveraging the broad potential of this modular approach, Burke (co)-founded multiple biotechnology companies, including REVOLUTION Medicines, Sfunga Therapeutics (now Elion Therapeutics), and cystetic Medicines, which have collectively advanced 7 drug candidates into clinical trials.

Burke was named a Beckman Foundation Young Investigator in 2008. The American Chemical Society awarded him in 2011 their Cope Scholar Award, in 2013 Elias J. Corey Award for Outstanding Original Contribution in Organic Synthesis by a Young Investigator, and in 2017 they named Burke their Nobel Laureate Signature Award in Graduate Education in Chemistry. More recently, Burke was elected to the National Academy of Medicine and American Society of Clinical Investigation. Among other honors, Burke is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has been recognized with the Hirata Gold Medal, Mukaiyama Award, and a Presidential Medal from the University of Illinois System.

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