Rate My Professor David Craik

Professor David Craik, AO, FRS, FAA, is a professor in the Centre for Chemistry and Drug Discovery at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland, where he leads a research team of 35 focusing on protein structure in drug and insecticide design. He obtained his PhD in organic chemistry from La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, and conducted postdoctoral studies at Florida State University and Syracuse University. Craik began his career with a lectureship at the Victorian College of Pharmacy in 1983, advancing to Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Head of School in 1988. In 1995, he joined the University of Queensland to establish a biomolecular NMR laboratory and has held positions including UQ Laureate Fellow (2015-2020), NHMRC Fellow, and Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Innovations in Peptide and Protein Science. He has trained over 70 PhD students, receiving UQ’s Research Supervision Excellence Award in 2007, and serves on editorial boards of journals such as Angewandte Chemie and ACS Chemical Biology, as well as the Council of the American Peptide Society (2015-2021).

Craik's research centers on the discovery, structural characterization using NMR, and applications of cyclic peptides like cyclotides—which he discovered—and toxins such as conotoxins in drug design and agriculture. His achievements include engineering orally bioavailable peptides 100 times more potent than gabapentin for neuropathic pain, developing Sero-X, the first mass-producible organic peptide insecticide approved for Australian crops, and producing peptide drugs in plants as biofactories. He has authored over 810 publications, including 14 in Nature journals, one in Science, and 12 in PNAS, with key papers such as 'Accurate de novo design of membrane-traversing macrocycles' (2022), 'Plant-based production of an orally active cyclotide for the treatment of multiple sclerosis' (2023), and 'The circular bacteriocin enterocin NKR-5-3B has an improved stability profile over nisin' (2023). His impact is recognized by awards including the Australian Academy of Science David Craig Medal (2023), Ralph F. Hirschmann Award (2011), Ramaciotti Medal (2014), and Vincent du Vigneaud Award (2015).