LAS alumni spotlight: Juan E. Velásquez скачать в хорошем качестве

LAS alumni spotlight: Juan E. Velásquez

This year, Juan E. Velásquez (PhD, '11) is the recipient of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Young Alumni Achievement Award. Velásquez currently serves as the director of Chemical Biotechonologies at Merck & Co. in New Jersey, where he has led efforts in enzyme discovery and engineering for the synthesis of pharmaceuticals targeting cancer, HIV, and cardiovascular diseases. Before Velásquez was innovating at Merck and impacting lives through science, he was a Ph.D. student in chemistry professor Wilfred van der Donk’s lab. When Velásquez graduated with high honors with his B.S. in chemical engineering, he applied to top graduate schools—and the Illinois chemistry Ph.D. program was on his list. During his time at the University of Illinois, Velásquez worked in the van der Donk lab within the interdisciplinary environment of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology and the Chemical-Biology Interface program, where he had “fantastic memories.” Positively impacting the health of people was always one of Velásquez’s goals. “I always felt that I wanted to explore working in a pharmaceutical company and being able to impact medicines,” he said when he was presented with an opportunity at Merck. After his time at Illinois and later at Procter & Gamble, Velásquez is living his dream. He and his team at Merck are faced with the challenge of producing a molecule that is expected to significantly impact cardiovascular health in an affordable and sustainable way. Velásquez has not forgotten the impact Illinois had on his goals. He reflects on his time as a student: “I saw…so much boldness of ideas and so many scientific backgrounds all working together in the same environment—that for me was recognizing that my life has changed in such a positive way. Those moments are very important when I come back to campus—having the same feelings, remembering what happened in that moment, and still felling that this place is like home: a place that opened my eyes to science, and so many opportunities in the field, to my career today.” Read more about Juan Velásquez’s journey at https://chemistry.illinois.edu/news/2.... For more info on liberal arts and sciences majors, including chemistry, visit https://las.illinois.edu/. #universityofillinois #collegeoflas