Anthony Czarnik
Anthony W. Czarnik (born 1957) is an American chemist and inventor. He is best known for pioneering studies in the field of fluorescent chemosensors and co-founding Illumina, Inc., a biotechnology company in San Diego. Czarnik was also the founding editor of "ACS Combinatorial Science". He currently serves as an adjunct visiting professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. Education. Anthony Czarnik attended the University of Wisconsin and received his B.S. in Biochemistry in 1977. He then studied with Nelson J. Leonard at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and earned an M.S. in biochemistry in 1980  and a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1981 with a thesis, "Chemical studies on nucleic acid analogues." He then studied with Ronald Breslow at Columbia University (1981–1983) as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow. Career. Czarnik joined the Chemistry Department at the Ohio State University as assistant professor in 1983. He later was promoted to associate professor. Czarnik worked at Ohio State University until 1993, when he was offered a position as Director of the Bio-Organic Chemistry group at Parke-Davis Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Czarnik was the founding editor of ACS Combinatorial Science (formerly "Journal of Combinatorial Chemistry"), an  academic journal published by the American Chemical Society. In April 1998, Czarnik co-founded Illumina, Inc., a biotechnology company now traded on NASDAQ and specializing in sequencing, genotyping and gene expression, with David Walt, John Stuelpnagel, Larry Bock, and Mark Chee. Czarnik served as Illumina's chief scientific officer (CSO) until 2000. He was terminated from his position of CSO and later filed a wrongful termination lawsuit. The Court ruled in Czarnik's favor, but the company appealed. The appeal court sustained the lower court verdict but in 2005 reduced the punitive damage ordered by the jury. Czarnik later filed  a patent law case in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, alleging four counts against his former employer, including reputational harm for correction of named inventor under 35 U.S.C. § 256. In 2001, Czarnik was recruited by Sensors for Medicine and Science, Inc., where he served as chief scientific officer. Since 2003, Czarnik has co-founded a number of biotechnology companies including Deuteria Pharmaceuticals LLC and Protia LLC. Czarnik is a founder of RenoCares, a charity that provides support to alcohol and drug addicts convicted of misdemeanors in the form of financial aid for rehabilitation treatment, counseling , and psychological services. The organization is managed by the Community Foundation of Western Nevada. Since 2016, annual Czarnik Awards are given for exceptional work in the area of chemosensors at the International Conference on Molecular Sensors and Molecular Logic Gates (MSMLG). In 2007, Czarnik took part as an executive producer of Electric Heart: Don Ellis, a documentary about Don Ellis, an American jazz musician. Research. While at Parke-Davis, Czarnik directed research early in the development of combinatorial chemistry. His group also conducted the first successful effort to discover small molecule drugs that work by binding to RNA. In 2003 , Czarnik gave an outline of a practical method for monitoring how chemosensors can be used to track glucose levels for diabetic patients. His work, as well as that of many others, led to the first implantable FDA-approved continuous glucose monitor. According to the University of Nevada, Reno's official website, Czarnik's research interests include "chemical product improvement using deuterium substitution, combinatorial chemistry as a tool for drug discovery, nucleic acids as targets for small molecule intervention, and fluorescent chemosensors of ion and molecule recognition". Fluorescent Chemosensors for Ion and Molecule Recognition. The concept of the fluorescent chemosensors-molecular  structures' ability to detect analytes was substantially developed in the book "Fluorescent Chemosensors for Ion and Molecule Recognition" edited by Prof. Anthony Czarnik and co-authored with other scientists. The work was sponsored by the Division of Organic Chemistry of the American Chemical Society and published in October 1993. The book's study is mostly focused on the analysis of the fluorescent chemosensors' chemical structures and their applications and technical uses in different fields of science. Eventually, chemosensors found applications in everyday life and in various areas such as in chemistry, biochemistry, immunology, physiology, medicine and even in the military  domain of landmine detection. The book laid foundation to other publications on chemosensors (also co-authored with Prof. Amilra Prasanna de Silva, J.P. Desvergne and others) and gained recognition and critical attention of the scientific community with some of the scientists defining Czarnik's contributions "significant" and "pioneering in the field of fluorescent chemosensors" "with a positive consequence on the creative pursuit of libraries of new molecules for a range of analyte targets".