Carbohydrate Chemistry (PDF)

Series editor Pavol Kovac, Ph.D., Dr. h.c., with more than 40 years of experience in carbohydrate chemistry and more than 270 papers published in refereed scientific journals or books, is a strong promoter of good laboratory practices and a vocal critic of the publication of experimental chemistry lacking data that allows reproducibility. He obtained an MSc in Chemistry at Slovak Technical University in Bratislava (Slovakia) and a PhD in Organic Chemistry at the Institute of Chemistry, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava. After postdoctoral training at the Department of Biochemistry, Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana (R. L. Whistler, advisor), he returned to the Institute of Chemistry and formed a group of synthetic carbohydrate chemists, active mainly in oligosaccharide chemistry, which put the Institute on the map for quality synthetic carbohydrate chemistry.

After relocating to the United States in 1981, he first worked at Bachem, Inc., Torrance, California, where he established a laboratory for production of oligonucleotides for the automated synthesis of DNA. In 1983 he joined the National Institutes of Health, where he is currently one of the Principal Investigators and Chief of the Section on Carbohydrates (NIDDK, Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry), the world's oldest research group continuously working on chemistry, biochemistry, and immunology of carbohydrates, originally established by America's greatest carbohydrate chemist, Claude S. Hudson. Dr. Kovac's main interest is in development of conjugate vaccines for bacterial diseases from synthetic carbohydrate antigens.