Blake Peterson was primarily raised in Reno, Nevada. After receiving a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Nevada Reno in 1990, he pursued a PhD in Chemistry with Prof. François Diederich at UCLA. During this time, he moved with Prof. Diederich to Switzerland, where he conducted research for two years at the ETH-Zurich. In 1994, he accepted a postdoctoral position with Prof. Gregory Verdine in the Dept. of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University as a Damon Runyon / Walter Winchell Cancer Research Foundation Fellow. In 1998, he joined the faculty in the Dept. of Chemistry at Penn State University as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2004. At Penn State, he was named a research scholar of the American Cancer Society (2003) and was the recipient of a Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award (2004). In 2008, he joined the faculty of the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Kansas (KU) as Regents Distinguished Professor and was named an Eminent Scholar by the Kansas Biosciences Authority. At KU, he was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, 2013). In 2019, he joined the faculty of The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy as Professor and Chair of the Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy. He additionally holds appointments at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center as John W. Wolfe Chair in Cancer Research, Co-Leader of the Translational Therapeutics Program, and Co-Director of the Medicinal Chemistry Shared Resource. His current research interests involve the use of organic/medicinal chemistry and chemical biology to develop chemical tools for early-stage anticancer drug discovery, with emphasis on the development of methods to study and control small molecule – protein interactions in physiologically relevant environments.
Links, contact information, and a photo of members of the Division are provided below.
Professor and Chair, Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy
Co-Leader, Translational Therapeutics Program of the OSUCCC
Co-Director, OSUCCC Medicinal Chemistry Shared Resource (MCSR) and High Throughput Screening Core Facility
The Ohio State University, College of Pharmacy, 500 W. 12th Ave, Columbus, OH 43210
Email: peterson.1119@osu.edu; Google Scholar; LinkedIn; Twitter (X)
