Gregory Challis

Professor Gregory Challis holds the Monash-Warwick Alliance Professor of Sustainable Chemistry (Chemical and Synthetic Biology), with a joint appointment between the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Monash University since 2016. His research spans the chemistry and biology of microbial natural products, focusing on antibiotic discovery, biosynthesis, and structural studies of biosynthetic enzymes.

His academic training includes a BSc in Chemistry from Imperial College London (1994) and a DPhil in Organic Chemistry from the University of Oxford (1998). He has held academic positions at the University of Warwick since 2001, progressing from Lecturer to Professor.

Research interests: Natural product discovery, elucidation of biosynthetic pathways, synthetic biology of antibiotics, and mechanism of action studies. Techniques include X-ray crystallography, cryo-EM, molecular genetics, and bioinformatics.

Recent publications highlight structural insights into polyketide synthases, enantiodivergent biocatalysis, and metagenomic approaches to nonribosomal peptide modification.

Scientific awards:

• Gabor Medal (2009)
• Wolfson Research Merit Award (2013-2018)
• Royal Society of Chemistry Interdisciplinary Prize (2017)
• Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (2011)

Supervision: Actively supervising PhD, MRes, and MChem students. Collaborations include Associate Professor Max Cryle and institutions in the UK, Australia, and internationally. Research funded by Monash-Warwick Alliance and NHMRC.