David W. Grainger

Grainger's early research focused on the failure of medical implants in the human body and the problems associated with blood coagulation and infection. Grainger began his academic career as an assistant professor at the Oregon Graduate Institute. He moved to become Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Colorado State University and was promoted to Full Professor there in 1999. In 2006, Grainger was awarded the Inaugural George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Presidential Endowed Chair and Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Health Sciences, at the University of Utah. He chaired this Department from 2006-2016, then became department chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Utah, where he currently resides as a University Distinguished Professor.

Grainger graduated with a B.A. degree in Engineering and minor in Chemistry in 1983. In 1987, Grainger completed his Ph.D. degree at the University of Utah in Pharmaceutical Chemistry in 1987 under National Academy member, Prof. Sung Wan Kim. His dissertation work involved synthesis of heparinized block copolymers and analysis of their blood coagulation properties in vitro and in vivo. He was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to work with Prof. Helmut Ringsdorf at the University of Mainz, Germany. This work produced new strategies for organizing two-dimensional protein structures on planar lipid films.

David William Grainger III was born in Boston, MA and grew up in Spokane, Washington. He graduated from Lewis and Clark High School in 1979 as valedictorian.