Professor Barbara Imperiali FRS

Barbara Imperiali is the Class of 1922 Professor of Biology and Professor of Chemistry at MIT. Imperiali received her BSc in Medicinal Chemistry from University College London and her PhD in Organic Chemistry in 1983, working with Satoru Masamune at MIT. Pursuing her long-term interests in research at the chemistry-biology interface, she carried out postdoctoral studies in biochemistry at Brandeis University with Robert Abeles. From 1989 to 1999, she was a member of the faculty of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Caltech, and in 1999, she returned to MIT as the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor. 

Imperiali avidly pursued the emerging fields of bioorganic and chemical biology from the beginning of her independent career. In 1992, she co-founded the first Gordon Research Conference in Bioorganic Chemistry as a forum for bringing the community together as the field began to be defined. Since the launch of her research program, Imperiali has investigated glycosylation and phosphorylation as modes of protein modification, employing a chemical biology perspective, developing chemical probes and biophysical approaches to provide insight into the structural and functional consequences of the diversification of the proteome.

Professor Imperiali is a passionate educator and has been recognized with numerous awards for teaching, including the Caltech Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching (1998) and the MIT School of Science Prize for excellence in undergraduate education (2002 and 2024). She was also named an MIT Margaret MacVicar Fellow (2003) to recognize her contributions to undergraduate education. 

Imperiali was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001. In 2006, she received the ACS Breslow Award for Achievement in Biomimetic Chemistry, the Kaiser Award of the Protein Society, and the Vincent du Vigneaud Award of the American Peptide Society. In 2010, Imperiali was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences.