Dr. Allan Dean Sherry

The estate of Cecil H. and Ida Green donated the funds in 1993 that created the endowed position in 1995. Sherry filled the chair in September 2005. The legacy of Cecil H. and Ida Green at UT Dallas was to establish in Dallas a world-class cohort of faculty and students in the new domain of integrated interdisciplinary biomedical research. The resources and talents of UTD and UT Southwestern are combined under the guidance of the two institutions’ Green Centers. Endowments were generated for faculty members whose research expertise lies at one of the interfaces between biomedical science and physical, mathematical, computational or engineering science, emphasizing in particular research that will create synergy with research at UT Southwestern.

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“In academics today we talk about one’s impact on science, all these so-called quantitative measures, like journal impact factors. I tell people that starting Macrocyclics has had a bigger impact on science than anything I have ever written. You can take any of my scientific articles – and I have close to 500 publications – and they all had some impact, but nothing like Macrocyclics.”

Considered one of The University of Texas at Dallas’ most distinguished chemistry professors, Dr. Allan Dean Sherry began his career at UT Dallas in 1972, when he arrived on campus on the heels of completing a National Institutes of Health (NIH) postdoctoral fellowship at New Mexico State University.

When Sherry retired in the summer of 2022, he had held the Green Distinguished Chair since 2005. In March 2023 he was named chair emeritus. Sherry also held a dual appointment as a professor of radiology at UT Southwestern Medical Center, which named him professor emeritus in the Advanced Imaging Research Center – a joint research facility with UTD, UT Arlington and UT Southwestern – for which he served as the founding director until 2019.

Over 50 years, Sherry’s academic career flourished apace with the growth of UT Dallas as he established himself as a trailblazer in designing chemicals called macrocyclic ligands for use in medical imaging. His research has played a critical role in refining diagnostic tools for more insightful diagnoses of medical conditions ranging from cancer to heart disease.

Originally hired as an inorganic chemist at UTD, Sherry quickly developed an interest in biochemistry and, together with colleagues from UT Southwestern, developed tracer molecules that can be used with MRIs to measure changes in metabolic pathways present in certain diseases, including obesity. They also developed molecules that report on key biological indicators of tumors using MRI.

By the mid-1990s, Sherry’s innovative chemical synthesis methods were considered so pioneering that researchers from around the world sought him out, eager to get their hands on his unique compounds. In response, he founded a company, Macrocyclics, a UTD spinoff that produces specialized chemical compounds used in the pharmaceutical industry and academic research.

At UT Dallas, Sherry headed the Department of Chemistry from 1979 to 1990 and was interim dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in 2020. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Wisconsin State University and his doctorate from Kansas State University.

Sherry has mentored more than 100 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, and he initiated the Green Fellows program, which allows UT Dallas undergraduates to conduct laboratory research at UT Southwestern. An inventor on 34 patents, Sherry has received numerous honors for his contributions to science. In December 2022, he was named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. His research has been supported by the NIH, The Welch Foundation, the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas, and other public and private sources.

In 2022 Sherry and his wife, Dr. Cynthia Sherry BS’78, made a $100,000 gift that established the Dean and Cindy Sherry Professorship in Chemistry, an endowment that will support the chemistry and biochemistry research-enhancing activities of the professorship holder.