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The Daily OrangeSci-Tech's Secret
Tucked away in an SU chemistry lab, Professor Robert Doyle works to change modern chemistry
By Andy McCullough
Posted: 11/13/07, 12:19 AM EST Section: News
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The business card says everything and nothing, four lines of text meant to encompass a career.
Robert P. Doyle, Ph.D., it reads.
Assistant professor. Syracuse University. Department of Chemistry.
Nothing but the taped-up card adorns Doyle's office door in the Science and Technology Center's second floor hallway.
No mention of the surge of new professors added by the chemistry department in the last decade - Doyle was the last one hired in 2005. No mention of how he arrived at SU, years consumed in three different continents by polymers and peptides, Vanadium and Vitamin B. No mention of how the work done by his research team may revolutionize the treatment of diabetes.
But that's OK. Office doors aren't supposed to say much else.
Inside his office, Doyle can explain things better. He is precise with his words, and in his Irish accent - where "um" is "em" and his wife Niamh is "Neev" - he's able to elucidate things.
That's Doyle. Meticulous. Sharp. His jeans flare, his shoes shine, his bald head is shaved tight and smooth.
Except the door is locked and the young professor is running late. But, that's OK, too. Understandable, even.
Because he might have more important things than this. Next month, his research team's work, specifically a compound which welds insulin to a B-12 vitamin and allows diabetics to take the drug orally, will be published in pharmaceutical journal ChemMedChem.
The formula has been patented, with successful testing on rats already conducted at SU by Tim Fairchild, one of Doyle's partners on the project and an assistant professor of exercise science.
The project is moving forward, though it's still years away from clinical testing on humans.
"What we need to do now is figure out how to improve upon that and build upon that success," Fairchild said. "And also we can now look at delivering other types of proteins and things like that - not just insulin.
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