Awards
- Distinguished Professor - 2021
- National Academies - 2013
- American Association for the Advancement of Science
About Malcolm E. Winkler
Malcolm Winkler earned his B.A. in biology and Ph.D. in genetics from Johns Hopkins University. He completed postdoctoral work as the Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University and previously held faculty appointments at Northwestern University and the University of Texas Medical School. While working as a research advisor in infectious disease research at Eli Lilly & Company he was an adjunct professor in biology at Indiana University before joining the IU Bloomington Department of Biology as professor in 2004. From 2004 to 2012, he served as founding director of the IU Biotechnology Program.
Focused on tackling the problem of antibiotic resistance, Winkler’s work has made seminal advances in understanding histidine biosynthesis in Salmonella, in uncovering the detailed mechanism by which transcription attenuation moderates tryptophan biosynthesis in E. coli, and toward understanding fundamental biological mechanisms in Streptococcus pneumonia. Using fluorescent probes for peptidoglycan synthesis and the results of these studies, combining elegant genetics and cell biology have made Winkler a bedrock member of the community of chemists and microbiologists tackling the problem of antibiotic resistance.
Winkler is one of three authors of Publication of Bacterial Pathogenesis, 3rd Edition, ASM Press (2011) and Publication of Bacterial Pathogenesis, 4th Edition, ASM Press (2019), the most influential text in this area for senior undergraduates and graduate students. He has authored or co-authored over 120 peer reviewed journal articles, 15 invited articles and book chapters, and 2 books. His work has been cited almost 10,000 times with an h-index of 57. With the exception of his time at Eli Lilly, his research has been continuously supported by extramural funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, who most recently recognized Winkler with a $3.3 million prestigious Senior Investigator R35 MIRA (Maximizing Investigator’s Research Award) award. Winkler was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2009 and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2013. He has given professional talks and seminars throughout the United States and in Sweden, France, Czech Republic, Portugal, Netherlands, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. In addition to several prestigious editorial positions, he has served as a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Bacteriology for 33 years.