Participating Departments

The major participating departments of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the Departments of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Chemistry in the School of Pharmacy offer excellent research opportunities for trainees.

Strong programs in Molecular Biosciences include protein structure and function, particularly mechanistic studies of enzymes and structural proteins, biophysical investigations of membrane proteins, and functional studies of enzymes involved in RNA processing and synthesis, molecular biology and virology, growth regulation, cellular signaling and signal transduction, developmental biochemistry, control of replication, and protein crystallography.  The Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry has a broad range of research projects ranging from traditional pharmaceutics to biotechnology.  Strengths in Chemistry and Medicinal Chemistry include molecular recognition and catalyst design, time-resolved laser-spectroscopic approaches to peptide and protein dynamics, free-energy simulations and other theoretical studies, NMR approaches to the structure of peptides in solution, mechanisms of enzymatic and model reactions, peptide synthesis and biochemistry, design of enzyme inhibitors, near-field microscopy of cell surfaces, photocaged agents, enzyme electrode applications, and immunochemistry. The range of scientific expertise among the training-grant faculty is broad.