Robert Maleczka > Biography

Robert E. Maleczka, Jr. is a Professor of Chemistry at Michigan State University. He received a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Illinois, and then spent three years in the anti-infective discovery group at Abbott Laboratories, before undertaking graduate studies at the Ohio State University. He earned his Ph.D. under the direction of Leo Paquette and then moved to the University of Pennsylvania as an American Cancer Society post-doctoral fellow in the laboratories of Amos Smith. In 1995, he began his independent career at MSU as an assistant professor. He moved up the ranks, being promoted to associate professor in 2001, full professor in 2006, and being named Department Chair in 2010. The Honors bestowed on Professor Maleczka include being named an American Chemical Society Fellow, the Merck Technology Collaboration Award, the EPA’s 2008 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award, the Astellas USA Foundation Faculty Award, the Novartis Lecturer title at Yale University, and Mentor of the Year award from the MSU Chapter of the National Society for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE). In 2006, Professor Maleczka and his collaborator Professor Milton “Mitch” Smith (Chemistry) co-founded BoroPharm, Inc. a Michigan-based company dedicated to the preparation and commercialization of novel building blocks for pharmaceutical syntheses. Professor Maleczka is an active member of the profession. Among his service and outreach roles, he has served as a Diversity Scholar in the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning, as an invited participant ACS/EPA Green Chemistry Market Roundtable and White House Forum, as a member and Chair of the ACS Award for Affordable Green Chemistry Selection Committee, as the elected treasurer of the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry, and a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Chemical Sciences Roundtable (CSR).