Department Chair

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Janet Yang received her BS from Yale University and then promptly headed for the West Coast. She attended the University of California San Francisco for her PhD in Biochemistry, and then did her postdoctoral work at the California Institute of Technology. Prof. Yang has always been fascinated by molecular motor proteins that harness the energy from ATP binding and hydrolysis to perform work in the cell. Her research uses quantitative thermodynamic and kinetic measurements to understand how these...

Education:
  • PhD, University of California San Francisco
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, California Institute of Technology

Program Director

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Michael Stevenson obtained a BS in biochemistry from the University of Washington and a PhD in chemistry from Dartmouth College. After graduate school, he first completed postdoctoral work at Ohio State University before going on to his second postdoctoral appointment at University of California, Davis. 

The Stevenson Group at USF studies the interplay between antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) and metals. Students in the group learn peptide biochemistry, coordination chemistry, spectroscopy, and...

Education:
  • Dartmouth College, PhD in Chemistry, 2016
  • University of Washington, BS in Biochemistry, 2009

Full-Time Faculty

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Amrita Bhattacharyya is an environmental geochemist. After completing her BS in Chemistry and MS in Environmental Chemistry from University of Calcutta, India, she moved to the USA to pursue her PhD in Environmental Chemistry at Pennsylvania State University. She continued to pursue her research in environmental chemistry as a post-doctoral fellow at Colorado State University before joining the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2015.

At USF...

Education:
  • Pennsylvania State University, PhD in Soil Science, 2012
  • University of Calcutta, MS in Soil Chemistry, 2007
  • University of Calcutta, BS in Chemistry (Honors), 2004
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Aleksandra Dimitrijevic Stamenov received her B.S. and Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Faculty of Chemistry, University of Belgrade, Serbia. For her thesis work she investigated activity and stability of microbial enzymes and their application in non aqueous catalysis. After graduate school she first completed a short training in proteomics and MALDI imaging mass spectrometry at INRA-Angers-Nantes Centre, France and then joined the lab of Dr. Dana Aswad at UC Irvine, for her postdoctoral work...

Education:
  • Faculty of Chemistry, University of Belgrade, Serbia, PhD, 2011
  • Faculty of Chemistry, University of Belgrade, Serbia, BS, 2008
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Professor Evbuomwan received her BS in Chemistry with a minor in Mathematics from Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho in May 2006. Later that year, she joined the chemistry program at the University of Texas at Dallas where she received her PhD in Chemistry under the supervision of A. Dean Sherry. Evbuomwan spent an additional year at UT Dallas as a postdoctoral research associate after which she was selected as one of ten Madrid-MIT M+Vision Postdoctoral Research Fellows at MIT. In...

Education:
  • PhD, University of Texas at Dallas
  • Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Texas at Dallas
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
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William Karney received his BA from Haverford College and his PhD in organic chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to his position at USF he did postdoctoral work at the University of Washington and the University of California, Berkeley.

At USF, William teaches organic chemistry and environmental chemistry. His research, performed in collaboration with Professor Claire Castro, involves the use of computational chemistry to understand the structures, energetics, and...

Education:
  • University of California, Los Angeles, PhD in Chemistry, 1994
  • Haverford College, BA in Chemistry, 1986
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Prior to joining the University of San Francisco, Dr. Meloni carried out post-doctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley and at Sandia National Laboratories. In his research, he employed state-of-the-art experimental and computational techniques, to study semiconductor clusters, van der Waals species, and hydrocarbon radicals. Dr. Meloni's interests range from high-temperature physical chemistry to spectroscopic characterization of reaction intermediates. More recently, his...

Education:
  • PhD, Universita' di Roma, La Sapienza
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Herman Nikolayevskiy received his BE in Chemical Engineering from Cooper Union, a primarily-undergraduate institution in the heart of NYC. After a transformative undergraduate research experience, Herman was inspired to pursue a PhD in Organic Chemistry at Yale University, where he focused on the total synthesis and computational analysis of bioactive natural products under Professor Seth B. Herzon. After leaving New Haven, Herman did his postdoctoral work at the National Institutes of Health...

Education:
  • PhD, Organic Chemistry, Yale University
  • BE, Chemical Engineering, Cooper Union
Expertise:
  • Organic synthesis
  • Mechanistic studies
  • Medicinal chemistry

Natalia Powers-Riggs received her bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University, where she double majored in Chemistry and East Asian Studies. She completed her PhD at Northwestern University where she used X-ray scattering and time-resolved optical spectroscopy to study structure and photoactivity of organic assemblies. She then joined the Solution Phase Chemistry group in the PULSE Institute at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory as a postdoctoral researcher, where she used X-ray scattering and...

Education:
  • Northwestern University, PhD in Chemistry, 2020
  • Wesleyan University, BA in Chemistry and East Asian Studies, 2013
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Tami Spector received her bachelor's from Bard College, her PhD from Dartmouth College, and was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota. She teaches Organic Chemistry I and II, Organic laboratory I and II, and Molecular Gastronomy: The Science of the Food We Eat.

Trained as a physical organic chemist, her scientific work has focused on fluorocarbons, the transformations of strained ring organics, and the molecular dynamics and free energy calculations of biomolecular systems...

Education:
  • PhD, Dartmouth College
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Dr. Jennifer Tripp received a bachelor's degree in chemistry from USF, and went on to earn a PhD in chemistry from UC Berkeley. Upon receiving her doctorate, she was granted an NSF International Fellowship supporting a two-year postdoctoral research appointment at the University of Oxford, where she developed novel separation techniques for archaeological biomolecules.

In 2017, after teaching chemistry at the University of Scranton, San Francisco State University, and the University of San...

Education:
  • PhD in Chemistry, University of California Berkeley
  • BS (summa cum laude) in Chemistry, University of San Francisco
Expertise:
  • Chemical applications in archaeology
  • Chromatography
  • Green chemistry
  • Polymeric materials

Faculty Emeritus

Claire Castro received her BA in Botany from UC Berkeley and her PhD in Organic Chemistry from UCLA. Her dissertation work focused on the synthesis of nucleoside analogs as anti-viral agents. After a short stint as a lecturer and post-doctoral scholar at UCLA, Claire joined the faculty at USF in 1994. Although she formally retired in 2017, she continues to teach on a part-time basis in the organic chemistry curriculum (the Medicinal/Synthetic Track). In addition, she, continues to work with her...

Education:
  • PhD, University of California, Los Angeles
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Professor Margerum started his professional career at the Clorox Technical Center investigating bleach stable metal chelates. He spend four years at Nycomed Salutar Imaging in Sunnyvale leading a team of scientists developing a Gd(III) contrast agent for blood imaging. He joined USF as assistant professor of analytical and inorganic chemistry and is currently professor emeritus with continuing interests in chemical education.

Education:
  • PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, UCLA