Ruoyu Li is currently affiliated with Peking University First Hospital, the National Clinical Research Center for Skin and Sexually Transmitted Diseases, and the Medical Mycology Research Center of Peking University, where she serves as Professor and Chief Physician. Her academic and professional career is deeply rooted in medical mycology, with 40 years of dedicated research and clinical practice. Her work has focused on the diagnosis of superficial and invasive fungal infections, antifungal resistance surveillance and control, and host immune responses against fungal infections. She has led the development of novel fungal diagnostic and drug-resistance detection methods in China, investigated mechanisms of antifungal resistance, and helped establish standardized clinical diagnosis and treatment protocols. Her team reported immune deficiencies associated with refractory opportunistic filamentous fungal infections related to STAT1 and CARD9 mutations, with in-depth mechanistic investigations.
Martin D. Burke is the May and Ving Lee Professor for Chemical Innovation at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), Founding Director of the Molecule Maker Lab, and Co-Founder of the Molecule Maker Lab Institute. He earned his B.A. in Chemistry from Johns Hopkins University, his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard University, and his M.D. from the Health Sciences and Technology Program at Harvard Medical School and MIT. He also helped launch the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, serving as its inaugural Associate Dean for Research. Burke pioneered blocc chemistry—iterative carbon–carbon bond formation that is friendly to machines, AI, and scientists alike. His lab developed MIDA and TIDA boronates to reversibly control boronic acid reactivity, enabling iterative carbon–carbon bond formation and universal catch-and-release purification. The discovery that TIDA boronates are more than 1,000-fold more stable than MIDA counterparts expanded blocc chemistry to stereospecific Csp³–C bond formation and accelerated automated synthesis from days to hours. His team has also integrated blocc chemistry with AI, achieving the first example of closed-loop learning in organic synthesis. More than 300 of Burke’s molecular bloccs are now commercially available and have been used by hundreds of labs worldwide to synthesize pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and advanced materials, contributing to more than 1,000 publications and 300 patents. In his own lab, Burke has applied blocc chemistry to develop molecular prosthetics—producing new therapeutic candidates for cystic fibrosis and anemia—to discover renal-sparing antifungals, and to drive AI-guided discovery of novel organic materials. Burke has co-founded five biotechnology companies—Revolution Medicines, Sfunga Therapeutics (now Elion Therapeutics), Excelsior Sciences, Kinesid Therapeutics (acquired by Cajal Therapeutics), and Cystetic Medicines—advancing seven drug candidates into clinical trials. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Society for Clinical Investigation and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has received numerous honors, including the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, the Elias J. Corey Award for Outstanding Original Contribution in Organic Synthesis by a Young Investigator, the Nobel Laureate Signature Award in Graduate Education in Chemistry, the Mukaiyama Award, and the Presidential Medallion from the University of Illinois, and he has many times been recognized as a Teacher Ranked as Excellent at Illinois.
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