About Sherry

Dean Sherry has an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Wisconsin State University, LaCrosse, and a Ph.D. in physical-inorganic chemistry from Kansas State University in 1971. He was awarded an NIH postdoctoral fellowship to study with Dennis Darnall at New Mexico State University.  They were among the first to use lanthanide ions as spectroscopic probes of protein structure.  He joined chemistry faculty at the University of Texas at Dallas in 1972 where he currently holds a Cecil & Ida Green Distinguished Chair in Systems Biology. Dr. Sherry was the Director of the Advanced Imaging Research Center from its inception in 2005 up until 2019. He also holds an appointment as Professor of Chemistry at the University of Texas at Dallas, and an appointment as a Professor of Radiology in the Department of Radiology at UT Southwestern. Dr. Sherry’s primary interests are the design, synthesis, and characterization of lanthanide chelates as tools for molecular imaging. He is an expert in 13C NMR spectroscopy for analysis of metabolic pathways. He was involved with the early development of gadolinium complexes as MRI contrast agents in the 1980s and now works on next-generation “smart” agents and other MR technologies (CEST and hyperpolarization) for reporting biological function in tissues by MRI. He has extensive administrative experience as head of Chemistry at UT Dallas, and 30 years of experience with high-resolution NMR. Dr. Sherry’s scientific contributions to molecular imaging were recognized recently by receipt of the Gold Medal from the World Molecular Imaging Society in 2013 and the Gold Medal of the ISMRM in 2015.

Awards and Fellowships

  • NSF Research Trainee, 1970-1971, Kansas State University
  • NIH Postdoctoral Fellow, 1971 -1972, New Mexico State University
  • AWU-AEC Summer Faculty Fellowship, 1975, Los Alamos Scientific Lab.
  • NIH Senior Fellow, 1983-1984, University of Texas Health Science Center
  • W.T. Doherty Award, 1990, DFW Section of the American Chemical Society
  • UT-Dallas Chancellor’s Council Outstanding Teaching Award, 1994
  • American Chemical Society, Phi Kappa Phi, Phi Lambda Upsilon
  • NIH Study Section Member, Biophysical Chemistry (BBCB), 1999-2003
  • Advisor for establishing the NIH Imaging Agent Roadmap database
  • External Advisory Board, NIH Molecular Imaging Program
  • Executive  Advisory Board, National High Field Magnet Lab
  • Fellow, International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, 2011 (ISMRM)
  • Gold Medal Award, World Molecular Imaging Society, 2013 (WMIS)
  • Gold Medal Award, International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, 2015 (ISMRM)
  • Fellow, World Molecular Imaging Society, 2015 (WMIS)

Link to Dr.Sherry’s UT Southwestern profile