Prof Phil Dawson is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry, Scripps Research in La Jolla, CA and former Dean of the Skaggs Graduate School of Chemical and Biological Sciences (2017-2024). He received an A.B. (1992) in Chemistry from Washington University, and Ph.D. (1996) from Scripps Research under the guidance of Steve Kent. After pursuing postdoctoral work at Caltech, he returned to Scripps as an Assistant Professor. He has served as President of the American Peptide Society, the Board of Directors for FASEB and cochaired the 22nd American Peptide Symposium and the GRC on Biology and Chemistry of Peptides. He has published over 200 papers and has been honored with an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation fellowship, the Vincent du Vigneaud Award, the Max Bergmann Kreis Gold Medal, the Zervas Award, the RSC MedImmune Protein and Peptide Science Award, the Akabori Memorial Award from the Japanese Peptide Society, the Cathay Award from the Chinese Peptide Society, the ACS Cope Scholar Award and will receive the Bruce Merrifield Award in 2025.

Professor Dawson is a pioneer of chemoselective ligation methods for macromolecule synthesis and modification and has applied these tools broadly to better understand biological systems.