Martin D. Burke

On August 19, 2020, Burke spoke at a press conference held by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker declaring that the covidSHIELD saliva test had been administered under an umbrella FDA emergency use authorization. Reporters at Illinois Newsroom broke that an FDA spokesperson commented that the test was indeed not Emergency Use Authorized, only a similar test developed at Yale had been authorized. Burke as well as others maintained that a "bridging study" allowed the test to be Emergency Use Authorized as it was deemed "non-inferior" to the Yale test. Nevertheless, the University of Illinois Press Release was amended to no longer claim Emergency Use Authorization in September 2020 without any notice that edits had been made. On January 14, 2022, the FDA did grant covidSHIELD Emergency Use Authorization under the EUA Number EUA202555.

Burke was named a Beckman Foundation Young Investigator in 2008. In 2013 the American Chemical Society gave him their Elias J. Corey Award for Outstanding Original Contribution in Organic Synthesis by a Young Investigator, and in 2017 they named Burke their Nobel Laureate Signature Award in Graduate Education in Chemistry.

He joined the Department of Chemistry in 2005 as an Assistant Professor, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011, then to full Professor in 2014. He was appointed Associate Dean of Research of the Carle-Illinois College of Medicine in 2018. In response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, Burke was appointed to lead the University of Illinois' SHIELD initiative to protect the community with testing. A collaborative effort between Burke and Paul J. Hergenrother lead to the development of a saliva test called covidSHIELD for COVID-19 that has been used over 1 million times in the campus community.

Martin D. Burke (born February 5, 1976 in Westminster, Maryland) is the May and Ving Lee Professor for Chemical Innovation at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and Associate Dean of Research in the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. His research has involved the development of antifungal treatments for cystic fibrosis, and the development of a COVID-19 test that the University of Illinois has used over one million times.

Burke was born on February 5, 1976 in Westminster, Maryland. Burke studied chemistry as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University, graduating in 1998 with his B.A. in Chemistry. While an undergraduate, he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Undergraduate Research Fellow, and he conducted research with Professors Henry Brem and Gary H. Posner on derivatives of calcitriol as potential drug candidates. Burke went on to Harvard University, where he earned a Ph.D. and M.D. in 2003 and 2005, respectively. Burke conducted his Ph.D. thesis work with Professor Stuart L. Schreiber on the combinatorial synthesis of small molecules with diverse skeletons.