Paul Bracher began his appointment as Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Saint Louis University in August 2013. He was born in Washington, DC and studied chemistry at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in the laboratory of John Liebermann, Jr. As an undergraduate Morse and Beckman Scholar at New York University, he investigated electron transfer in functionalized fullerenes with David I. Schuster. Paul earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard University, where he was an NSF Graduate Fellow, and subsequently, a Harvard Origins Initiative Fellow. His graduate work in the lab of George M. Whitesides included research on protein–ligand binding, hydrogels, nanofabrication, and origins-of-life chemistry. Paul was an NSF ACC Postdoctoral Fellow in the group of Harry B. Gray at Caltech, where he worked on the discovery of materials for the conversion of solar energy into chemical fuels. His current research interests center on chemistry relevant to the origin of life on Earth.