Hello, my name is Dirk Schweitzer.
I grew up in the town of Neustadt/Orla, which was up to 1989 in the former "German Democratic Republic" or "DDR". After the "Wende" in 1989, that was, the Fall of the Berlin Wall by our peaceful revolution, and the reunification of Germany in 1990, Neustadt/Orla is now situated in the state of Thüringen. From 1978 to 1988, I attended the POS Friedrich-Schiller in Neustadt/Orla, and from 1988 to 1990, I attended the EOS in Pößneck.
In 10th grade I had to decide upon a career path. It had to be at such a young age, since 11th and 12th grade were only open to pupils that intended to attend university afterwards. I decided that I wanted to study chemistry since it is independent of the political system, and there is a chemical industry in every country. Another reason why I decided to study chemistry is that I was always interested in mineraology. My aim was to study chemistry in the DDR and then try to go to a western country. I wanted to be in a western country before the year 2000, which, thanks to the "Wende," also happened. Thanks to the "Wende," I was living much earlier in a western country than I had ever hoped. With the reunification of Germany on October 3rd, 1990, I was living in a western country.
In September of 1990, I started the study of chemistry at the Friedrich-Schiller Universität in Jena. In the summer of 1992, I spent 2 months at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. This was my first visit to the United States of America. From September 1994 to September 1995, I did the research for my German "Diplom-Chemiker" degree (Dipl.-Chem.) ("Master's of Science in Chemistry") at the University of Texas at Austin under the supervision of Prof. Sessler. Here are the abstract and table of contents of my Diplomarbeit. While studying at the University of Texas at Austin I decided that I wanted to go to graduate school in the United States. In the following year, I worked at the Institute for Molecular Biotechnology in Jena. In that year, I took the GRE and TOEFL tests and applied for graduate school in the United States. The best offer I received was from the Chemistry Department of the University of Washington in Seattle, so I went there. I started my graduate study at the UW in September of 1996. After five years of hard work, I finished with my "Doctor of Philosophy" (Ph.D.) degree in June of 2001. I performed my thesis research in Bioinorganic Chemistry, specifically studying oxygen- and water-sensitive coordination compounds, under the supervision of Prof. Kovacs. Feel free to have a look at my thesis (ISBN: 0-493-24508-1), here are its abstract and table of contents.
During my time in Seattle I also met my wonderful wife Erin Robinson. Since she is an American citizen, I am now a permanent resident. You can see pictures of us on my "US Family" page. :)
After finishing my Ph.D. thesis, I worked as a synthetic, organic postdoc for Prof. Marzilli at Emory University in Atlanta. During that time, I synthesized substituted nucleosides and nucleotides, as well as amine-fluorophor conjugates. To challenge myself, I worked as a Visiting Scientist on, and completed, the total synthesis of a complex marine natural product called Iejimalide B in the laboratory of Prof. Helquist at the University of Notre Dame.  My project involved the total synthesis of natural products and their subunits. Specifically, I worked on the Iejimalides. These compounds are interesting since they have anti-cancer activity.
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