Dirk Trauner is the Janice Cutler Chair in Chemistry at New York University. The broad objective of his research is to demonstrate the power of chemical synthesis with challenging target molecules and to use it toward the establishment of synthetic biological pathways. Photopharmacology is a special focus of his research group. They incorporated photoswitches into PROTACs as a way to control targeted protein degradation with the spatial and temporal precision that only light provides.