In 1995 he began a chemistry degree at New York University, and enthusiastically accepted [David] Schuster’s offer to work in his lab, synthesizing compounds that linked C60 with porphyrins to make artificial photosynthetic systems.

He then pursued a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Elias James Corey at Harvard University who reflected on Baran's time in his lab, saying, "He had a phenomenal grasp of synthetic chemistry," and "felt that he could be a leader in his generation.

His contributions in methodology center around practical C-H functionalization reactions and have had a remarkable impact based on actual drug candidates brought into the clinic using these methods and the sales of numerous reagents he has commercialized for use in the pharmaceutical industry.

[10] In 2016, he joined forces with fellow Scripps colleagues, Benjamin F. Cravatt and Jin-Quan Yu to co-found Vividion Therapeutics with the goal of identifying small molecules that bind currently undrugged targets via a covalent-first chemoproteomics approach.

[12] In the same year, Baran founded Elsie Biotechnologies, an antisense oligonucleotide (ASO)-based company with the goal of discovering therapeutic agents that can achieve desirable medicinal effects not attainable with existing drugs by modulating gene expression of DNA or RNA.

Baran also co-founded and is on the scientific advisory team of Galileo Biosystems, a preclinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing therapeutic agents for inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

[15] Three years after the partnership began, the ElectraSyn was debuted in a Steve Jobs-esque fashion at the American Chemical Society annual meeting, drawing a large crowd of eager chemists.

As methods develop towards more 1e- thinking, this strategic and tactical approach to synthesis will continue to aid in the construction of interesting and valuable natural products and medicinally important compounds.