Central College Athletics

A stellar baseball and academic career resulted in Duerfeldt's award as the 2006 CoSIDA Academic All-America® of the Year. He was a two-year Central co-captain and led the 2006 Dutch to a share of their first Iowa Conference championship in 31 years, posting a 26-14 overall mark. Duerfeldt ranked fifth in the NCAA Division III with a school-record .481 batting mark, scoring 48 runs, driving in 65 and hitting six home runs. He batted a school-record .384 for his career and ranks third in career RBIs with 129, fourth in runs with 135, tied for ninth in home runs with 16, tied for third in doubles with 41, second in triples with 12, fifth in slugging percentage at .594 and second in total bases with 320. He set 15 school records overall including longest hitting streak (20 games).

An Urbandale, Iowa native, Duerfeldt was named the conference MVP and was a two-time all-conference honoree. In 2006 he was a first-team ABCA Division III All-Central Region pick after receiving second-team honors in 2005 and was tabbed as the 2006 National College Baseball Writers Association Division III Central Region Position Player of the Year.  He was a three-time CoSIDA academic all-region pick and a two-time first-team CoSIDA Academic All-America® selection. Duerfeldt was also named the Woody Hayes Division III Men's National Scholar-Athlete of the Year and the Duane Schroeder Iowa Conference Male Athlete of the Year. On campus, he received the Travis Sterling Strength and Conditioning Award in 2006.

Graduating from Central with a 3.88 grade point average and a chemistry major, he received the Madison and Lila Self Graduate Fellowship at the University of Kansas where he earned a Ph.D. degree in medicinal chemistry. He was a postdoctoral research associate at The Scripps Research Institute in California from 2011-14, serving as an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow from 2012-14. Duerfeldt then was named an Assistant Professor at the University of Oklahoma, where he conducted research from 2014-21. He was a Distinguished Faculty Fellow there from 2016-19.

In 2021 he accepted his current post as Associate Professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Minnesota. In 2018, Duerfeldt also co-founded Excitant Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical start-up dedicated to the development of non-invasive therapies for ophthalmic diseases.