Professor Sweedler received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from the University of California at Davis in 1983, and his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 1989. Thereafter, he was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University before joining the faculty at Illinois in 1991. His research interests are in bioanalytical chemistry and focus on developing new methods for assaying the chemistry occurring in nanoliter-volume samples and applying these analytical methods to characterize the small molecule and peptide cell-cell signaling molecules from systems ranging from microbial ecologies to animal nervous systems. Sweedler is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Analytical Chemistry.