Emory chemist Kyle Biegasiewicz wins funding for research designing new molecules
August 3, 2026 April Hunt
The Lilly Grantee Program award provides two years of unrestricted funding, supporting Kyle Biegasiewicz’s efforts to use natural enzymes to streamline the synthesis of molecules for drug development and training of student researchers. Photo by Avery Spalding, Emory Photo/Video.
Emory University chemist Kyle Biegasiewicz has received a national peer award through the Lilly Grantee Program to advance his work using enzymes for applications in biomedical research.
Lilly Research Laboratories, Eli Lilly and Co, awarded Biegasiewicz two years of unrestricted funding totaling $150,000 through the Lilly Grantee Program, established in 1965 to identify and support young investigators with exceptional potential to shape the future of chemistry.
Biegasiewicz, an assistant professor of chemistry in Emory College of Arts and Sciences. is among a handful of researchers chosen for the transformative award, which will also help train postdoctoral researchers, graduate students and undergraduates in the Biegasiewicz Lab.
“Ever since I was an undergraduate, I’ve been really excited about building complex molecules in a sustainable way, and perhaps more importantly, training the next generation of scientists that are equally passionate about this idea,” he says.
Biegasiewicz’s work sits at the frontier of synthetic chemistry, where organic chemistry and chemical biology intersect.
The application of enzymes in chemical synthesis is poised to have a groundbreaking impact on how scientists think about discovering and making molecules in societally important areas such as drug development and agricultural products.
“Receiving this award is humbling and I am filled with gratitude, not only to Eli Lilly but also to all of the trainees who have contributed to the work in my lab,” adds Biegasiewicz, who was also recognized with a Young Investigator Award from the American Chemical Society’s Division of Organic Chemistry last year. “This award is a team award more than an individual one.”
Standing at the forefront of a growing field
Biegasiewicz has focused his research on using halogenase enzymes — specialized catalysts that add halogen atoms such as chlorine and bromine to create natural products such as antibiotics — to solve longstanding problems in chemical synthesis.
Emory offers ideal positioning for this research, thanks to longstanding collaborations between Emory College and the School of Medicine, including the Emory Center for New Medicines, says Simon Blakey, professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry at Emory College.
“The new technologies Kyle is exploring at this stage of his career are very exciting for us,” Blakey says. “His work — and teaching these techniques from the ground up to his lab members — allows us to make things we’ve never made before.”
Known as biocatalysis, using enzymes in synthetic chemistry is an emerging but growing field due to its selectivity, efficiency and environmental safety.
For instance, using naturally occurring proteins to build new molecules creates cleaner products by reducing the need for heavy purification and limiting exposure to dangerous chemicals.
Enzymatic reactions also allow for access to higher-precision targets and make production more efficient and easier to scale, since the time to build complex molecules takes hours, not days, explains lab member Carter Brzezinski. Brzezinski joined the Biegasiewicz lab as a postdoctoral researcher after earning his PhD in molecular pharmacology from Emory last year.
“It helps you get out of bed in the morning knowing that someone is funding your research because they think it’s important,” Brzezinski says. “Someday, someone might be able to use what we’re doing to manufacture a medicine in a way that reduces its cost or is made more safely for everyone.”
This real-world impact and interdisciplinary work also attract undergraduate researchers such as Katerina Duda, a rising junior who began working in the Biegasiewicz lab her first year on campus.
“It’s like we’re making building blocks of what could ultimately make 10 or 15 valuable molecules,” says Duda, a chemistry major from Edina, Minnesota, who plans to pursue a PhD in organic chemistry.
“This work gives me knowledge that I can apply widely on any project I would work on,” Duda adds. “Nature has given us all these interesting enzymes that can do things that synthetic chemistry is just becoming aware of. Unlocking that potential is what this work is all about.”
