Ronald T. Raines is the Henry Lardy Professor of Biochemistry, Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Biology, and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research is focused on the chemical basis for protein structure and function. His efforts have led to an RNA-cleaving enzyme that is in a multi-site human clinical trial as an anti-cancer agent, revealed that an unappreciated force—the n-to-pi* interaction—stabilizes all proteins, created hyperstable and human-scale synthetic collagens, and established chemical processes to synthesize and esterify proteins and to convert crude biomass into useful fuels and chemicals.