Wencewicz says he is not one for awards and feels undeserving of the accolades.

“It’s humbling,” he said, adding he just tries to represent his family and where he came from well. “I’m honored. I just want to do something good for people. There are others who deserve this far more than me, but I am happy to be that vessel.”

At Washington University, Wencewicz teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in organic chemistry and bio-organic chemistry. He comes by teaching and mentoring honestly, the son of two teachers – his mother a former first grade teacher and his father a former college math professor.

“My mom always says, ‘teaching is the family business,’” he said.

“It was such a blessing to have two loving parents,” he continued. “They showed me how to do it.”

As a faculty member, Wencewicz says he is deeply committed to mentoring and recruiting students and discovering chemistry-based solutions to the antibiotic resistance global health crisis. 

Currently, he says, much attention is paid, and financial resources are poured, into the development of pharmaceuticals like GLP1s widely being adopted for the treatment of Type 2 diabetes and obesity, Humira for autoimmune conditions and Keytruda to treat various cancers. 

“That level of research doesn’t exist for antibacterial resistance,” he said, but as an academic, “I can do things and take risks not happening in the private sector” to change that. 

His work bridges the academic world with the Washington University School of Medicine, and the recently launched Washington University School of Public Health, using personalized and precision medicine and technological advances to treat global infectious diseases.

Specific research in which Wencewicz is currently engaged includes the development of the molecular structure for a radioactive tracer to diagnose and image infections associated with bone implants. The prototype radiotracer enables the selective imaging of bacterial infections in mice. With further development, he aims to collaborate with Washington University physicians and radiologists for commercialization and translation to the clinic for imaging prosthetic joint infections in human patients.

He is also proud of his involvement with a Washington University-sponsored effort, MycoTranscend. This involves efforts to develop an antibiotic in the treatment of Mycobacterium abscessus, one of the most difficult infections to treat and often associated with pulmonary disease. Washington University is one of the few medical facilities worldwide to offer lung transplants to patients with this infection; such an antibiotic would go a long way with these procedures, he said.

Additionally, last year, he and a team of faculty and student colleagues completed a 15-year effort to modify an existing antimalarial drug and convert it into a new antibiotic unyielding to bacteria that increasingly have become crafty at evading antibiotic drugs.

Wencewicz has received funding to further his research from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Children’s Discovery Institute at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, among others. He also has been honored for his work with many awards, including the Distinguished Young Alumni Award from Southeast Missouri State University, a Sloan Research Fellowship in Chemistry to further his antibiotic drug discovery work, the Cottrell Scholars Award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and the Eli J. and Helen Shaheen Graduate School Award in Science, the University of Notre Dame’s top graduate research award.

He also has received the WashU Arts & Sciences Emerging Leadership Award, and was the inaugural winner of the WashU Undergraduate Inquiry Mentor Impact Award. 

Mentoring, he said, is grounded in the Catholic education he received at Notre Dame – “working with others, being kind to others, putting others first.” These principles, he says, have made him an effective mentor to lift up others.

He also credits his father for modeling what a mentor should be. The elder Wencewicz taught mathematics for 42 years at Southeast Missouri State University.

“I would study in my dad’s office” at Southeast. “I saw my dad help students with anything and saw he was making a real impact. I admired my father so much for that. He knew all his students by name,” he said, and kept an ongoing ledger of their names that he studied at home. “The only really important thing we have in life is relationships,” Wencewicz said. “That’s really where things can happen.”

In addition to mentorship, Wencewicz is currently a member of the Southeast Missouri University Foundation Board, and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Biological Chemistry and the Journal of Antibiotics. He recently co-chaired the Enzyme Mechanisms Conference in Carlsbad, California, a prestigious gathering of scientists from around the globe.

His research pursuits are many as his inquisitive nature seemingly has no bounds. His scientific pursuits began surfacing at a young age. He recalls enjoying Mrs. Angela Schaefer’s chemistry class at Notre Dame, finding a space where “I could be creative,” he said. “Chemistry is an area where I could understand the material and formulate my own ideas. While all my teachers at Notre Dame were influential, Mrs. Schaefer’s enthusiasm for teaching chemistry and helping students was the catalyst for my trajectory in science.”

He encourages current Notre Dame students to consider pathways in STEM – science, technology, engineering and mathematics. 

“Science is not always first on people’s radar, but there will always be career opportunities that benefit society through the sciences,” he said. “There is a great national need for young people to enter this space. It’s never too early to start investing in yourself. It only takes curiosity and a passion for problem solving. Give it a chance. A career in science is a very enriching mission.”

Another he credits for blazing the trail for him at Notre Dame is Mr. Brad Wittenborn, who taught physics. Wencewicz recalls an instance when class time was cut short, postponing a planned lab exercise on pulleys and weighted systems, a topic that piqued his interest. So, Wencewicz asked if he could conduct the lab on his own, and Wittenborn kindly obliged, coming in and setting it up for him outside of class.