Drug Discovery | Research Interests

Name	Email	PhD Program
Fergus, Mary EMAIL	PHD PROGRAM RESEARCH INTEREST Biochemistry, Drug Discovery, Pharmacology	“I am interested in drug discovery for cancer, infections, and other medical diseases. I like investigating how to optimize potential drug treatments. Understanding biochemical pathways to help contribute to drug design.”
Clarke, Brandon EMAIL	PHD PROGRAM RESEARCH INTEREST Drug Discovery, Neurobiology, Pharmacology	“I am interested in learning and gaining a better understanding of the molecular basis of neurodegenerative diseases. I’m also interested in gaining a better understanding of drug discovery in the context of diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, asthma, and pain.”
Funk, Adam EMAIL	PHD PROGRAM RESEARCH INTEREST Drug Discovery, Pharmacology, Structural Biology	“I am interested in using computational drug discovery and structural biology to guide the process of drug discovery and pharmacological characterization of novel drugs. I would like to combine both wet lab techniques and computational analyses to guide my experimental work.”
Uchenna, Ikenna EMAIL	PHD PROGRAM RESEARCH INTEREST Cell Signaling, Drug Discovery, Translational Medicine	“I am interested in understanding the mechanism of dysregulated signaling in disease, particularly, cancer and cardiovascular disease. I am also interested in translating my findings to help advance clinical practice and therapeutic innovations in this field. “
Arango, Camila EMAIL	PHD PROGRAM RESEARCH INTEREST Biophysics, Drug Discovery, Structural Biology	“Interested in pursuing research that focuses on using biophysical methods to answer and elucidate structures of protein/small molecule that can be used a potential therapeutic and has wide applications in medicine. Also interested in protein design and gaining computation skills to potentially design proteins from scratch.”
Nenad, Will EMAIL	PHD PROGRAM RESEARCH INTEREST Bioinformatics, Drug Discovery, Genomics	“I’m very interested in pursuing computer aided drug discovery. I would like to work on a project that has to do with prediction of molecular targets or drug interactions using computational tools. Or I would also like to use genomics to get a better understanding of diseases to eventually to apply to drug discovery.”
Rowe-Conlon, Sarah WEBSITE EMAIL PUBLICATIONS	PHD PROGRAM Microbiology & Immunology RESEARCH INTEREST Antibiotics/Antivirals, Bacteriology, Diabetes, Drug Delivery, Drug Discovery, Pathogenesis & Infection, Pharmacology, Translational Medicine	My lab studies recalcitrant bacterial infections and antibiotic treatment failure. Focusing on bacteremia and wound infection, we utilize a range of in vitro, tissue culture and mouse models to understand the precise nature of treatment failure and exploit this knowledge to modulate antibiotic activity in the host environment. My long-term goal is to bring improved therapeutic strategies to the bedside.
Frankowski, Kevin WEBSITE EMAIL PUBLICATIONS	PHD PROGRAM Pharmaceutical Sciences RESEARCH INTEREST Chemical Biology, Drug Discovery, Translational Medicine	We are inspired by the diversity and complexity found in natural products and use their architecture as both a platform for developing chemical methods and as scaffolds for new molecular tools in chemical biology. We have employed our chemical synthesis skill set to solve emerging challenges facing modern medicine. This has led to ongoing collaborative projects in metastatic cancer, hepatitis C antivirals, dopamine signaling and sigma receptor ligands. Of particular interest is the development of next generation anti-metastasis agents to our recent phase I clinical candidate, metarrestin.
Sheahan, Tim WEBSITE EMAIL PUBLICATIONS	PHD PROGRAM Microbiology & Immunology RESEARCH INTEREST Drug Discovery, Pathogenesis & Infection, Virology	Dr. Sheahan is an expert virologist with a primary appointment in the Department of Epidemiology in the Gillings School of Global Public Health and a secondary appointment in Microbiology and Immunology in the School of Medicine. His research is focused on understanding emerging viral diseases and developing new means to stop them with a current focus on coronavirus and hepacivirus.
Freeman, Ronit WEBSITE EMAIL PUBLICATIONS	PHD PROGRAM Applied Physical Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry RESEARCH INTEREST Biomaterials, Biophysics, Cancer Biology, Cell Biology, Cell Signaling, Drug Delivery, Drug Discovery, Nanomedicine, Translational Medicine	My lab focuses on developing bioinspired molecular constructs and material platforms that can mimic proteins and be programmed to respond to stimuli resulting from biomolecular recognition. Major efforts are directed to design peptide- and nucleic acid-based scaffolds or injectable nanostructures to create artificial extracellular matrices that can directly signal cells.

Research Interest: Drug Discovery