Dr. Prokai is the first Chair in Biochemistry endowed by the Houston-based Welch Foundation, one of the United States’ oldest and largest private funding sources for basic research, at UNT Health Science Center. He is affiliated with UNTHSC’s Department of Pharmacology and Neuroscience, and with the Institute of Healthy Aging. Dr. Prokai also is Adjunct Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Texas at Arlington, as well as Adjunct Professor and Associate Member of the Graduate Faculty at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry of Texas Christian University.
His interests focus on chemistry-driven multidisciplinary research and include the discovery, chemical biology, bioorganic, and medicinal chemistry of central nervous system agents, as well as neuropeptides, proteomics, and mass spectrometry.
Dr. Prokai has maintained an actively funded research program from grant support by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as well as through collaborations with pharmaceutical and chemical companies. Dr. Prokai was the recipient of the 2017 Wilfred T. Doherty Award of the Dallas/Fort Worth Section of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the 2017 Southwest ACS Regional Award.