Philip Dawson is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Cell and Molecular Biology at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in La Jolla, CA and is also the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies for the Kellogg School of Science and Technology at TSRI. He received an A.B. in Chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis in 1992 and a Ph.D. in 1996 from The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA under the guidance of Stephen Kent. Following postdoctoral work at the California Institute of Technology with Harry Gray and Tom Meade, he returned to TSRI as a member of the departments of Chemistry and Cell Biology. He was elected to the Council of the American Peptide Society and was co-chairman of the 22nd American Peptide Symposium in 2011 and will co-chair the Peptides Gordon Conference in 2016. He has published over 100 papers and reviews and has been honored with an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation fellowship, the Vincent du Vigneaud Award from the American Peptide Society and was awarded Max Bergmann Kreis Gold Medal in 2011.