Craig Lunte Memorial International Travel Award

The Craig Lunte Memorial International Travel Award is distributed in honor of late KU Professor Craig Lunte and will be used to support early career faculty and graduate students in the Chemistry Department with awards for pursuit of international scholarly activities, such as attending an international conference, workshop or internship.

The Craig Lunte Memorial International Travel Award committee (with the approval of KU Endowment) will determine the award recipients. The number and amount of the available awards can be adjusted at the discretion of the committee, based on inflation and expendable funds, and the committee gives preference to early career faculty.

Application requirements: 

• Estimate of costs for trip
• Updated CV
• Accepted abstract/poster to conference/meeting (if applicable)
• Letter of support from advisor (students only)

Please submit an application here. 

Professor Craig E. Lunte
(1957 - 2015)

Whether in front of a classroom full of eager minds or in the laboratory providing hands-on instruction to curious students, Professor Craig E. Lunte, Ph.D. never missed an opportunity to share his wealth of knowledge. Once described as the “doyen of microdialysis,” Lunte was internationally recognized for his use of microdialysis sampling for drug metabolism studies. He also developed many novel separation and detection methods for the analysis of microdialysis and other biological samples. He was a well known electrochemist and developed several new electrochemical detectors for liquid chromatography and electrophoresis, and was an active member of the separations community as well. 

Lunte received his bachelor's degree, cum laude, from the University of Missouri-Rolla in 1979 and his doctorate from Purdue University in 1984 under the direction of Peter Kissinger. He subsequently held a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Cincinnati with William Heinemann until he joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Kansas in 1987. He was chair of the Chemistry department from 2001-2005 and from 2009-2013. He spent two sabbaticals at Dublin City University in Ireland and was a SFI Walton Fellow.

The author of more than 150 research papers, Lunte was a member of several scientific societies including holding multiple positions within the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS). He was also a Fellow of AAPS and received the AAPS Research Achievement Award in Analysis and Pharmaceutical Quality in 2008. He received the Higuchi Research achievement award in 2013. He was also on the review and editorial boards of numerous scientific journals.

Trained as a classical analytical chemist, Lunte also had expertise in biochemistry, pharmacology, and neurochemistry as a result of his numerous collaborations across the globe. He took the most pride, however, in acting as mentor to 18 postdoctoral research associates, 42 graduate students, over 65 undergraduate students, and 17 visiting students and scholars. This dedication to teaching was further evidenced by the Self Graduate Fellowship Program Mentor Achievement Award received in 2001 and the John C. Wright Graduate Mentor Award received in 2007.

Lunte grew a vast “extended family” of academic and industrial professionals throughout his career. Stacy Arnett, Ph.D. recalls his “ability to see each researcher as an individual and challenge each researcher based on his or her personalities, talents, and interests.” His “kindness and excellent mentoring to incoming international graduate students” is fondly remembered by M. Ehsanul Hoque, Ph.D.

Lunte also provided numerous opportunities for his students to attend conferences and participate in internships as an avenue to share their research with the broader public. Eric Crick, Ph.D. recalls his six-month internship in the laboratory of Malcolm Smyth at Dublin City University (Ireland) as being “one of the best opportunities” that he was given toward his professional development. Crick also remembers Lunte as “a very generous person. Late in my graduate school career, he took three graduate students (including myself) to a very small, but focused conference on microdialysis in Holland. It was initially very intimidating, but being able to interact with the leaders in the field and discuss your research one-on- one was a very rewarding experience.” 

Lunte was always quick to share what motivated him to keep doing what he loved – being able to graduate successful Ph.D. students. His main focus was that students leave his laboratory as better scientists and even better individuals; he wanted to see his students get the jobs that they wanted, doing science that makes a difference.

In addition to mentoring students, Lunte worked tirelessly to improve the Chemistry Department. During his tenures as Department Chair, he welcomed 14 new faculty to the Department. Lunte took a strong interest in seeing these Assistant Professors succeed, and to date, not one of Lunte’s hires has been denied tenure. Heather Desaire was one of these faculty. She joined the Department in 2002. She commented, “Craig always supported his faculty. He was a tireless advocate for us, and he also challenged us to reach our full potential. His advice, about gaining tenure, was that faculty should not focus on whether or not they met the standards for tenure. Rather, we should aspire to greatly exceed the standards, leaving no doubt that we deserved it. Craig held himself up to these high expectations. He was an excellent role model to all of us.”