About Me

Background

Like so many students, I began college as a pre-med major, aspiring to become a physician. However, I quickly realized what inspired me about medicine was beyond the physical act of caring for those in need; rather, I was deeply fascinated by understanding the mechanisms underlying diseases and the development of therapeutics to combat these diseases. 

Inspired by the biographies of scientists like Linus Pauling and Marie Curie, I pursued my undergraduate studies as a University Honors Program Scholar at Georgia Southern University, specifically interested in the cross-section of chemistry and medicine in the development of therapeutics. To gain a holistic perspective on the interrelationship between chemistry and human physiology, I sought advanced courses in biology and biochemistry, as well as research experiences with broader impacts in medicinal chemistry. 

Undergraduate Career

During my sophomore year, I began my Honors Thesis under the advisement of Dr. Hans Jörg-Schanz, in which I worked towards the development of a hemoglobin-based blood substitute for the treatment of traumatic brain injuries. Stemming from my thesis research, we unveiled and began probing a novel polyaddition technique centered on the hydroamination of diverse amine scaffolds. This technique offers economic and scalable access to polyelectrolytes with widespread biomedical applications. The preliminary investigations into this polymerization technique, conducted by myself and two of my mentees, helped to secure a grant from the ACS Petroleum Research Fund to continue investigations. 

During my undergraduate studies, I also had the privilege to receive an NSF-REU fellowship from North Carolina State University, where I focused on the integration of computational chemistry into organic synthesis under the advisement of professors Dr. Joshua Pierce and Dr. Elon Ison. At NCSU, I was tasked to develop a methodology for photochemical access to thiazoline scaffolds present in biologically active natural products. Using a computational approach, I designed and executed a theoretical exploration of the effects of substituents on the N‒O bond dissociation energy of thiohydroximic acids for photoinduced radical cyclization of these acids to 2-thiazoline scaffolds, which are present in a variety of biologically active natural products. This work was nominated and selected for presentation at the National Council of Undergraduate Research (NCUR) REU Symposium in Washington, D.C. in 2017. 

Graduate Career

My undergraduate coursework and research experiences exposed me to the importance of fundamental scientific research to human health and the development of modern therapeutics, motivating my desire to delve deeper into these areas by pursuing my graduate studies at Emory University. In July 2022, I completed my Master of Science in Chemistry (Chemical Biology, Organic Synthesis) at Emory,  wherein my research centered on the development and biological investigations of antimicrobial compounds and their resistance. Seeking to delve deeper into my interests in biology, bioinformatics, and human health, I entered into the Cancer Biology PhD Program in the Fall of 2022, joining the lab of Dr. Manoj Bhasin, where I currently work on single-cell and spatial transcriptomic investigations of tumor microenvironments and various diseases.

You can learn more about my research here or about what I am currently working on here!