I was introduced to the wonders of science at a young age. I recall many Saturdays spent sitting on a stool at the bench, swirling beakers full of colored solutions and carefully examining the yield of my prized crystal growing kits. My father is an organic chemist, and the owner of a small biotech company. Many of my first and most influential introductions to science were spent with him and it was largely as a result of witnessing his passion and excitement for his work that I too decided to pursue a career as a chemist. As early as high school, I became aware of the global threat posed by antibacterial-resistant organisms while traveling with my family to the jungles of Peru. In the midst of poverty and disease, it became apparent to me that bacterial infections were both ubiquitous and devastating. As such, I have long been passionate about the development of antimicrobial agents.<br/>Most known antibiotics are compounds discovered from microorganisms. Microbes interact with their neighbors through a complex web of communication and combat, largely by production of molecules called natural products. To develop antibiotics that possess potency and long-term efficacy, it will be critical to identify inhibition strategies that evade resistance mechanisms and apply less evolutionary pressure to slow the development of resistance. The rapidly expanding frontier between chemistry and biology provides exceptional promise for antibiotic discovery and it was with this in mind that I sought training in the field of chemical biology. I obtained my PhD at the University of Wisconsin – Madison under the direction of one of the pioneers in the field of Chemical Biology, Professor Laura Kiessling and next, pursued postdoctoral studies iwith Professor Benjamin Cravatt at The Scripps Research Institute, who is renowned for his work in the development of tools to map the activity state of proteins.<br/>Using a combination of skills obtained in these groups, and expanding to include my passion for natural products, my research group unites tools from chemistry and biology to explore and exploit the master regulators of microbial behavior. This strategy is in direct contrast to traditional antimicrobial discovery efforts that have depended upon the identification of compounds that simply kill bacteria, which results in the rapid evolution of resistance. Instead, we focus on the identification of proteins and small molecules that are required for microbial “conversations.”

Inspiration from nature: Mentors and molecules

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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