Meet Medicinal Chemistry's Eight PhD Graduates

The end of the academic year brought some bittersweet moments as eight students in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry successfully defended their PhD theses:

Alexander Hurben, PhD
“Developing Chemical Tools to Map Molecular Mechanisms that Drive Disease”
Advisor: Dr. Natalia Tretyakova
Alexander is heading to UC Berkeley as a postdoc.

Garrett Schey, PhD
“Exploring and Exploiting the Substrate Selectivity of Farnesyltransferase”
Advisor: Dr. Mark Distefano

Caroline Buchholz, PhD
“Chemical Probe Development for Bromodomain and PHD Finger-containing Transcription Factor (BPTF) Reader Domains as Anti-Cancer Therapy”
Advisor: Dr. William Pomerantz

Jacob Bouchard, PhD
“Discovery of Potent and Selective Melanocortin Receptor Ligands”
Advisor: Dr. Carrie Haskell-Luevano

Samantha Kennelly, PhD
“Synthesis And Characterization Studies Of Nucleoside Analogues: Chemical Probes With Photochemically Controlled Properties And Phosphoramidate Pronucleotides As Antiviral Agents”
Advisor: Dr. Daniel Harki
Samantha is relocating to the Bay Area to work in industry.

Maxwell Dillenburg, PhD
“Design, Synthesis, and Characterization of Nucleoside Based Probes to Evaluate the Role of Human Histidine Triad Nucleotide Binding Protein 1 in Mu Opioid Receptor and N-Methyl-D-Aspartate Receptor Cross Regulation”
Advisor: Dr. Carston R. Wagner

Md Abdullah Al Noman, PhD
"Developing Contraceptives & Anticancer Agents: RAR Alpha Antagonists & Pironetin Analogs"
Advisor: Dr. Gunda Georg
Noman is heading to Stanford as a postdoc.

Peng Ge, PhD
"Development of Bioassays Engaging Principal Protein Targets in the Diagnostic and Mechanistic Studies of Parkinson's Diseases and Tuberculosis"
Advisor: Dr. Courtney Aldrich
Peng will be working for a consulting firm in Atlanta.

We are proud of our graduates and excited to see where their journeys take them. Each is on their own trajectory, but we know they are well prepared for whatever challenges they decide to tackle next.

Congratulations, graduates!