Rate My Professor Mary Jo Ondrechen

Mary Jo Ondrechen is Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Northeastern University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, a position she has held since 1990, following appointments as Assistant Professor (1980-1986) and Associate Professor (1986-1990). She also serves as Affiliated Faculty in the Department of Bioengineering. Ondrechen received an ACS-certified B.A. in Chemistry from Reed College in 1974 and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Northwestern University in 1978. Her postdoctoral experience includes a research associate position at the University of Chicago (1978-1979) and a NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship at Tel Aviv University (1980).

Ondrechen’s research centers on theoretical and computational chemistry, computational biology, and bioinformatics, with emphasis on enzyme catalysis, predicting protein biochemical functions from 3D structures, protein engineering, enzyme design, and structure-based drug discovery. She invented computational predictors including THEMATICS (“THEMATICS: A Simple Computational Predictor of Enzyme Function from Structure,” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98, 12473-12478, 2001), POOL (“Partial Order Optimum Likelihood (POOL): Maximum Likelihood Prediction of Active Site Residues Using 3D Structure and Sequence Properties,” PLoS Comput. Biol. 5(1): e1000266, 2009), SALSA (“Protein Function Annotation with Structurally Aligned Local Sites of Activity (SALSAs),” BMC Bioinformatics 14(Suppl 3):S13, 2013), and a graph-based method (“Functional classification of protein structures by local structure matching in graph representation,” Protein Science 27, 1125-1135, 2018). Recent publications encompass functional characterization of crotonase superfamily proteins (ACS Chem. Biol. 17, 395-403, 2022) and DNA polymerase kappa predictions (Chem. Res. Toxicol. 36, 1789-1803, 2023). Her contributions are supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Notable awards include the 2026 AAAS Lifetime Mentor Award, 2024 American Indian Science and Engineering Society Technical Excellence Award, 2021 Fulbright Faculty Research Scholar, 2018 SACNAS Outstanding Native American Student Mentor Award, and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship (1987-1991). A member of the Mohawk Nation, she promotes STEM diversity through mentorship.