Patrick Dussault

Dean › Graduate Studies
Charles A. Bessey Professor
Professor of Chemistry

University of Nebraska-Lincoln • 809B HAH • Lincoln NE, 68588-0683 • 402.472.6951 • pdussault1@unl.edu

Patrick Dussault is a Charles A. Bessey Professor and Professor of Chemistry. He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Irvine, and a doctorate in organic chemistry from California Institute of Technology (CalTech).

Dussault appointment as dean of Graduate Studies became effective June 1, 2011.

He joined UNL in 1988 after two years at Duke University as a National Cancer Institute Postdoc. He joined UNL as assistant professor (1988-94), was tenured and promoted to associate professor (1994-2001) and full professor in 2001. He was chair of the Department of Chemistry from 2001 to 2007. He was named a Bessey Professor in 2009.

His research focuses on organic synthesis — better ways to make molecules — and in particular on synthesis of organic peroxides, often unstable "cousins" of hydrogen peroxide that are important in a number of areas: aging, new treatments for cancer and parasitic diseases, and the problem of improvised explosives. His team has been funded by the NIH, NSF, American Cancer Society, the Army Research Office, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and USDA. His latest project is a five-year multimillion dollar effort partnering nine faculty members from UNL with faculty from four other Nebraska colleges/universities to create the Center for Nanohybrid Functional Materials, which will explore new sensing principles, and hopefully new devices, based on nanomaterials.

Dussault grew up on an avocado farm in San Diego County in California. He has two children, one a UNL graduate and another still attending UNL.

He pronounces his name "Du-SALT."

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