Neil L. Kelleher, PhD is the director of the 50-person Proteomics Center of Excellence and a member of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University. His research is focused in the areas of top-down proteomics, natural products discovery, and cancer biology. Dr. Kelleher and his team drives both technology development and applications of very high performance mass spectrometry in proteomics and metabolomics. For bacteria and fungi, new platforms now feed compounds from the natural world into pharmaceutical pipelines.  In proteomics, Kelleher has emerged as a leading voice in a calling for an analogue of the Human Genome Project applied to human proteins.  This effort is called the Human Proteoform Project and has recently been endorsed by research consortia.  Neil is a serial entrepreneur with experience in spinning up four small companies, including a software shop providing the leading search engine used in >1000 labs for “top down proteomics”. His contributions to the fields of proteomics and natural products chemistry have been recognized by multiple awards, including the Biemann Medal from the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry from the American Chemical Society, a Searle Scholar Award, a Packard Fellowship, and the Allen Distinguished Investigator Award.

Basic metrics for the Kelleher academic operation are:  H-factor ~75; >380 total publications; 50 Ph.D. students; >150 postdoctoral trainees.