
Jonathan V. Sweedler
Jonathan Sweedler is the James R. Eiszner Family Endowed Chair in Chemistry at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and also the editor-in-chief of the nearly century-old journal Analytical Chemistry. He specializes in analytical chemistry and neurochemistry to understand cell-to-cell signaling pathways involved with learning, behavior and memory.
Sweedler’s research team is developing mass imaging approaches that allow thousands of individual cells to be analyzed — measurement capabilities that are wholly unique and not currently available elsewhere. One area of focus is understanding how networks of neurons and associated supporting cells such as glia can work together to confer emergent properties that give rise to behavior and memory. Specific queries address what molecules are present in specific cells and networks, and how they change based on network activity, animal behavior, or even on exposure to drugs.
Professor Sweedler received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from the University of California at Davis in 1983, and his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 1989. Thereafter, he was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University before joining the faculty at Illinois in 1991. He is a fellow of the American Chemical Society and was honored with the Visionary Award from the American Diabetes Association.