Ronald Raines is the Henry Lardy Professor of Biochemistry and a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Ron received Sc.B. degrees in chemistry and biology at MIT, and A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in organic chemistry at Harvard University. He was a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco. He joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1989.

Ron has contributed broadly to our understanding of the chemistry and biology of peptides and proteins. He discovered fundamental attributes of the collagen triple helix, enabling him to assemble triple helices that are stronger and longer than any found in nature. Ron demonstrated that mammalian ribonucleases can become potent cytotoxins and potential cancer chemotherapeutics. He developed the traceless Staudinger ligation as a means to couple synthetic peptides and thus synthesize proteins.

Ron has trained more than 70 doctoral and postdoctoral students. He is an author of more than 200 research papers, and an inventor on more than 10 US patents.

Citation for Makineni Lecture:
"Self-Assembly of Synthetic Collagen Triple Helices" Kotch, F. W.; Raines, R. T. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2006, 103, 3028–3033.