Holden Thorp, Kenan Professor and chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is former dean of the UNC-CH College of Arts and Sciences following his tenure as director of the University’s Morehead Planetarium and Science Center. He is also the former chair of the chemistry department where he has been a member of the faculty for over 15 years.
Thorp has published more than 130 scholarly publications on the electronic properties of DNA and RNA. He invented technology for electronic DNA chips that is the basis of 19 issued or pending U.S. patents. One of his technologies is being used to provide a less expensive blood test to determine if prospective parents carry the gene for cystic fibrosis. For his DNA chip technology, Thorp was recognized as one of the Top Innovators of 2001 by Fortune Small Business magazine. He also has been adviser, co-founder or consultant with many small companies, including Novalon Pharmaceuticals, MaxCyte, Osmetech, OhmX and Plextronics. In 2005, Thorp co-founded Viamet Pharmaceuticals Inc., a biotechnology company targeting metalloenzymes in the fields of infectious disease, inflammation and oncology.
Thorp has received many other honors for his research, including the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Young Investigator Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, and both the New Faculty Award and Teacher-Scholar Award from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation.