Gill Chairs

Richard D. DiMarchi, Ph.D.

Richard D. DiMarchi, Ph.D., has accepted a tenured professorship as the Jack and Linda Gill distinguished chair in biomolecular science at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, where he will teach and continue his professional interests in the structure-activity relationships of macromolecules. Before coming to Indiana University, Professor DiMarchi was Group Vice President for Lilly Research Laboratories. His most recent responsibilities in this position were associated with Lilly’s investments in research technologies and product development. He has championed the introduction and integration of cutting-edge chemical and biological technologies, including genomics, proteomics, high throughput screening, and combinatorial chemistry. Professor DiMarchi has also played a key role in advancing pharmaceutical sciences, in particular the field of biopharmaceutics and alternative drug delivery. In recent years, he has led Lilly’s re-engineering of product development and project management. He will maintain a continuing relationship with Lilly as a Visiting Lilly Scholar consulting in the areas of gene-based pharmacology, diabetes, and obesity.

“Richard brings extraordinary intellect and a most impressive record of accomplishment and experiences to Indiana University,” said Gerald L. Bepko, former president of Indiana University. “Among many other things, he will add significantly to IU’s leadership in the Life Sciences Initiative.”

“Richard’s understanding of structure-activity relationships at the chemical and biomedical interface and his extensive leadership experience make him a tremendous addition to our faculty,” said David E. Clemmer, Ph.D., chairman of the Department of Chemistry. “He also brings a rare understanding of how to blend research areas across what have been traditional barriers between industry and the academy. We are very pleased to have Richard join our faculty.”

Professor DiMarchi joined Lilly in 1981, after advanced academic training at Indiana University and The Rockefeller University. He is the author of more than 150 scientific publications and patents, and is a founding member of the American Peptide Society.

Professor DiMarchi has played an important role regarding Lilly’s bioproducts, including the molecular design of Humalog. In 1998, the American Chemical Society recognized the seminal importance of this discovery through their Innovation Award. Humalog represented the first biosynthetic hormone optimized by rDNA technology approved as a human medicine.

Professor DiMarchi serves on the boards of directors for Advanced Research and Technology at Indiana University (ARTI) and Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO). He is a member of the Indiana University Science Advisory Committee.

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Ken Mackie Ken Mackie has joined Indiana University as a Linda and Jack Gill Chair of Neuroscience and Professor of Psychology where he is continuing his research on the function and role of the endogenous cannabinoid system. Ken received his MD from Yale University, completed his clinical training at Yale and the University of Washington, and did post-doctoral work at Rockefeller University and the University of Washington. Prior to coming to Indiana University, Ken was a Professor of Anesthesiology as well as Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington, and an Attending Anesthesiologist at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. In addition to his laboratory work, Ken has served on numerous NIH and private foundation review committees and editorial boards. He has also been quite involved in educational endeavors to communicate contemporary research findings to general audiences, including secondary school teacher education and community outreach programs. Ken's research program focuses on cannabinoid receptors, the cell surface receptors responsible for most of the psychoactive and therapeutic actions of cannabis. His group uses a variety of techniques, including electrophysiological, molecular, immunological, and imaging, to better understand how cannabinoid receptors signal and how their signaling interacts with other cellular processes. Much of the current work in Ken's lab centers on endogenous cannabinoids (endocannabinoids), compounds produced by the body that interact with cannabinoid receptors. These molecules have been implicated in processes as diverse as memory, analgesia, anxiety, schizophrenia, and obesity. One of the recent results from Ken's group suggests that cannabis produces some of its effects by blocking the normal actions of endocannabinoids. This contrasts with the mode of action of opiates, which appear to produce their psychoactivity by mimicking the effects of endogenous opiates (endorphins). The results of Ken's studies helps to explain the psychoactivity of cannabis, the consequences of its prolonged use, and how the endocannabinoid system might be used in a therapeutically beneficial fashion. back to top

J. Michael Walker

J. Michael Walker accepted the Linda and Jack Gill Chair of Neuroscience and Professor of Psychology at Indiana University where he is continuing his research on lipid signalling molecules that mediate pain and inflammation. Before coming to Indiana University , Walker served as Professor and Chairman of Psychology and Professor of Neuroscience at Brown University . During his 20 years at Brown, Walker developed an interdisciplinary lab oratory that examines the biochemical underpinnings of pain signalling using a variety of approaches ranging from identification of novel signalling molecules using mass spectrometry, to neuroanatomical, neurophysiological and biobehavioral approaches. Walker has worked with many students at all levels, and served on grant review committees for NIH, NSF and a number foreign agencies, as well as editorial boards, and as president of the International Cannabinoid Research Society. He has been the recipient of grants from the government and private foundations and was the recipient of a research career development award from the National Institutes of Health.

Walker notes that the role of lipids as messengers in the nervous system is poorly understood but that recent advances in chemistry and molecular biology provide the tools to rapidly advance our understanding of their actions. By modifications to recently developed methods for the identification of proteins, Walker 's lab oratory has identified new families of lipids that alter pain sensations. Among the most potent of these molecules is one they call NADA. This compound is structurally similar to capsaicin, the component of hot chili peppers that causes the “heat” sensation upon consumption. This molecule is formed by tissues, activates a known ion channel, and may serve naturally to cause pain, perhaps during the process of inflammation or when heat is applied. Nearly all lipid messengers affect the nervous system by first binding to receptor proteins on the cell surface. Molecular biologists have provided the chemical structures of numerous receptors, but for many, the identity of the chemical messengers that activate them remain unknown. Recent findings indicate that many of these unidentified signalling molecules are likely to be lipids. At Indiana , Walker plans to incorporate molecular biology approaches in his lab oratory in order to hasten progress towards matching up signalling lipids with their receptors and in the process to further our understanding of the biomolecular basis of pain.

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Gill Professor
Robert de Ruyter van Steveninck

Robert Raimond de Ruyter van Steveninck, is a Full Professor and a Gill Professor in the Department of Physics at Indiana University . He received his Ph.D. in 1986 from the University of Groningen in The Netherlands. He then worked at Cambridge University's Zoological Laboratories on a Royal-Society postdoctoral fellowship. His other professional experiences include serving as a member of the European Community Codest/IPRL group, the University Hospital in Groningen , and the Dutch Foundation for Biophysics. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, division of Biological Physics. Prior to joining the IU faculty he was a Senior Research Scientist at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton . From 1998-2002 he co-directed the summer course “Methods in Computational Neuroscience” at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA.

His research centers on coding and computation in the sensory nervous system. An important motivation of this work is to search for optimization principles underlying biological information processing. The signals collected by the sense organs are uncertain, and the nature of this uncertainty is twofold: Sensory signals fluctuate in ways that are causally related to events in the environment, but on top of this there are random variations in the physical carriers of these signals. From this corrupted sensory input the brain must make deductions about the events that caused them. The statistics of signal and of noise together determine how sensory signals should be processed in the best possible way, and it is interesting to ask how close biological systems are to being optimal in this sense. Before this question can be answered, we need to know how to interpret neural signals, that is, we need to understand the neural code. These issues are studied both experimentally and theoretically. The experiments center on the visual system of the blowfly, where recordings are made from photoreceptors and from motion sensitive neurons. This system allows long term stable recordings, and the quality of the data makes it possible to put theories of neural coding and optimal processing to quantitative tests. One clear theoretical prediction is that the optimal processor is context dependent, and for this reason there is a substantial effort to understand neural processing in the animal's natural environment.

“Rob's primary achievement has been to bring a level of rigor and precision to the topic of neural coding far beyond anything achieved before, “ Professor Laurence Abbot of Brandies University commented. “Every researcher in neuroscience who thinks about the ways in which action potentials encode information and convey it within nervous systems has been deeply affected by Rob's work and his way of thinking.”

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