Keary Engle, PhD
Keary Engle is the Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies at Scripps Research and a professor in the Department of Chemistry. As dean, he oversees the Skaggs Graduate School of Chemical and Biological Sciences, a program consistently ranked among the top 10 in the nation.
Engle’s research focuses on accelerating the synthesis of organic molecules that are used in medicines, biological probes, agrochemicals, and materials building blocks. Many of these molecules are difficult to prepare, requiring several steps to create, costing a substantial amount of time and effort, and generating large quantities of waste. Engle’s lab is developing catalysts that enable efficient, effective and sustainable methods of chemical synthesis to better produce small molecules. Catalysts developed in the Engle lab have been rapidly adopted in academic and industrial labs around the world.
Prior to joining Scripps Research as an assistant professor in 2015, Engle was an NIH Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the California Institute of Technology. He is also a recipient of the 2021 NSF CAREER Award, 2021 Amgen Young Investigator Award, 2020 Eli Lilly Organic Chemistry Award, and 2018 Bristol Myers Squibb Unrestricted Grant, among many other honors. Since joining the institute, Engle has served on more than 90 graduate student advisory committees.
He earned his doctorate (Ph.D.) at Scripps Research, doctor of philosophy (D.Phil.) in Biochemistry at the University of Oxford, and his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry, Economics, Mathematics, and Statistics at University of Michigan.