Dr. Schepartz is Milton Harris '29 Ph.D. Professor of Chemistry, with a joint appointment in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale University. She received her B.S. degree in chemistry from the State University of New York, Albany and her Ph.D. in chemistry from Columbia University. In addition, she was a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow with Peter Dervan at the California Institute of Technology.

Dr. Schepartz's honors include the following: the Presidential Young Investigator Award, the Morse Faculty Fellowship, the David and Lucille Packard Fellowship Award, the Eli Lilly Fellowship, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, the A. C. S. Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry, the Dylan Hixon '88 Award for Teaching Excellence in the Natural Sciences, and the Agnes Fay Morgan Research Award. In addition, she has served as a member and chair of the NIH Study Section on Bioorganic and Natural Products Chemistry.

Alanna Schepartz's research focuses on how cells effectively use proteins to achieve a precisely controlled gene-regulatory network; on how this network is usurped when cells succumb to viral attack; and on the design of miniature proteins that mimic the functional properties of proteins found in nature. She will create two courses—Chemical Biology and Chemical Biology Laboratory—to provide undergraduates with early, hands-on exposure to chemical biology.