Dennis A. Dougherty


Dennis A. Dougherty is the George Grant Hoag Professor of Chemistry at California Institute of Technology. His research applies physical organic chemistry to systems of biological importance. Dougherty utilizes a variety of approaches to further our understanding of the human brain, including the in vivo nonsense suppression methodology for incorporating unnatural amino acids into a variety of ion channels for structure-function studies.
He currently lives in South Pasadena with his wife Dr. Ellen Dougherty, the superintendent of the Lawndale Elementary School District.

Education

Dougherty received his B.S. and M.S. in 1974 from Bucknell University. Subsequently, he earned his Ph.D. in 1978 under the supervision of Kurt Mislow at Princeton University and was a post-doctoral scholar in Jerome Berson's lab at Yale University in 1979.

Career

In 1979 Dougherty became a member of the Caltech faculty, earning tenure in 1985. He is the scientific co-founder of Neurion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. In 2005 he published a textbook entitled Modern Physical Organic Chemistry with co-author Eric V. Anslyn.
Dougherty is the recipient of multiple teaching awards including the Richard Badger Teaching Award, the ASCIT Excellence in Teaching Award, and the Richard P. Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching. In 2009, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Cation-π Interaction

Selected publications