Rate My Professor Emily Derbyshire

She joined Duke in 2013 as a Scholar in Residence in the Department of Chemistry, progressing to Assistant Professor of Chemistry from 2014 to 2021 and Assistant Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology from 2014 to 2023, then Associate Professor of Chemistry from 2021 to 2024. The Derbyshire Lab integrates chemical biology, molecular biology, and biochemistry to uncover novel aspects of malaria parasite biology, particularly the liver stage, aiming to identify druggable targets through phenotypic and target-based screens, pathway exploration, and small molecule development. Notable publications include "Structure and regulation of soluble guanylate cyclase" (Annual Review of Biochemistry, 2012), "Liver-stage malaria parasites vulnerable to diverse chemical scaffolds" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012), "Diversity-oriented synthesis yields novel multistage antimalarial inhibitors" (Nature, 2016), "The cytoplasmic prolyl-tRNA synthetase of the malaria parasite is a dual-stage target of febrifugine and its analogs" (Science Translational Medicine, 2015), and recent papers such as "Host Sphingolipids Support Plasmodium berghei Liver Stage Development" (mBio, 2025) and "Selective Targeting of Plasmodium falciparum Hsp90 Disrupts the 26S Proteasome" (Cell Chemical Biology, 2024). Her impactful research has earned awards including the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, ACS Infectious Diseases Young Investigator Award, AAAS Marion Milligan Mason Award, Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2020), Sloan Research Fellowship (2021), AAAS Fellow (2024), and American Academy of Microbiology Fellow (2026).