Lawrence Schook, Vice President for Research
Lawrence B. Schook is Vice President for Research, encompassing the three campuses of the University of Illinois, and serves as the senior research officer of the university's $800M/annual sponsored research portfolio, intellectual property, technology commercialization, and economic development activities. He is a noted entrepreneur who has launched two start-up medical application companies and is a Fellow at the Kaufman Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership. He has served on the boards of multiple biotechnology companies and the board of directors for the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) and was appointed by Governor to the Illinois Innovation Council. He is currently on the Board of Managers for the Argonne and Fermi National Laboratories.
He is the Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Professor, and previously served as the Director of the Division of Biomedical Sciences. He holds appointments as Professor of Animal Sciences, Bioengineering, Pathobiology, Nutritional Sciences, Pathology, and Surgery. He also is a Professor in the Institute for Genomic Biology and holds Affiliate Faculty appointments at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and the Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory. His research focuses on comparative mammalian genomics and applications of technologies to create biomedical models. He has served as the Principle Investigator for over $25M in sponsored research from the NIH, NSF, USDA and industry.
Professor Schook has also served in several key leadership roles at the National Research Council in animal genomics, and Chaired the Executive Steering Committee of the Alliance for Animal Genome Research. He is coauthor of the both the cattle and pig NIH genome project White Papers and is Project Director for the International Swine Genome Sequencing Consortium.
He attended Albion College (B.A, 1972; Distinguished Alumni Award, 1996) and received his Ph.D. from Wayne State University School of Medicine. After postdoctoral training at the Institute for Clinical Immunology in Switzerland and the University of Michigan, he has held faculty positions at the Medical College of Virginia, University of Minnesota, and the Ludwig Cancer Center at the University of Lausanne. He is a recipient of NIH, Swiss National Fund and Pardee Fellowships, was named a University Scholar, received the Funk Award for Meritorious Achievements in Agriculture, the H. H. Mitchell Award for Graduate Teaching and Research, and the PfizerAnimal Health Research Award. He is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fulbright Distinguished Chair in genomics at the University of Salzburg. He was recently selected as the 9th UIUC Chancellor's Center for Advanced Study Lecturer for his work on genomics and evolutionary biology. He has mentored 38 undergraduate students, 37 M.S./Ph.D. students and 19 postdoctoral fellows, has written more than 200 published works, has edited six books and is founding editor of Animal Biotechnology.