Spring 2025

Seminar Schedule Spring 2025
Seminars in Pharmaceutical Sciences


(In-person seminars are Wednesdays at 11:30 AM in Room B32 PHARM in Chicago and via remote for Rockford unless otherwise noted)


Wednesday, January 8




NO SEMINAR



(classes start January 13)


Wednesday, January 15


Natural Products: Advancing Toward Hypothesis-Driven Science


Xiaoyu Tang, PhD, Assistant Professor and Assistant Director, Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, Institute of Chemical Biology, Guangming District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China (host: Brian Murphy)

Wednesday, January 22


NO SEMINAR


NO SEMINAR

Wednesday, January 29


Advancing the frontiers of design-driven medicine with synthetic biology


Joshua N. Leonard, PhD, Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence, Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University (host: Joanna Burdette)

Wednesday, February 5


12pm - 1pm


1017 MBRB Auditorium




MCBD / PSCI Seminar:

Emerging Opportunities in Computational and Biophysics-Inspired Drug Discovery



John Karanicolas, PhD, Head of Computational Drug Discovery, AbbVie, North Chicago (hosts: Kevin Drew / José Villegas -- Joint with Biological Sciences)


Wednesday, February 12


Overcoming Development and Manufacturing Hurdles: A Case Study for Launching a Tablet Drug Product with Spray-Dried Intermediates



Haichen Nie, PhD, Associate Director at Teva Pharmaceuticals (host: Angeliki Andrianopoulou/AAPS)

Wednesday, February 19


Targeting Coagulation in the PDAC Tumor Microenvironment: Engineering Approach to Translational Drug Discovery


Bumsoo Han, PhD, Professor, Mechanical Science & Engineering, The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (host: Rick Gemeinhart)


Wednesday, February 26


Overcoming the Multiscale Simulation Challenge for Biomolecular Systems: The HIV Virus as an Example


Greg Voth, PhD, Haig P. Papazian Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Chemistry, The University of Chicago (host: José Villegas)


Wednesday, March 5


Chemoenzymatic Platforms for the Discovery of New Peptide Therapeutics


Albert Bowers, PhD, Professor & Vice Chair, Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry, Eshelman School of Pharmacy, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (host: Bryan Lampkin)


Wednesday, March 12


Patterns of Klebsiella pneumoniae dissemination from the lung


Michael A. Bachman, MD, PhD, Clinical Associate Professor of Pathology,
Clinical Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Department of Pathology, Michigan Medicine, University of Michigan (host: Nancy Freitag)


Wednesday, March 19

TBA


Alice Cheng, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Committee on Microbiology, Biological Sciences Division, The University of Chicago (host: Matt Henke)


Wednesday, March 26


SPRING BREAK

Chemical Inhibition of Bacterial Immune Systems


J.P. Gerdt, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, Indiana University Bloomington (host: Matt Henke)


Wednesday, April 2


TBA


Andrew Lowell, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, Virginia Tech (host: Paul Carlier)

Wednesday, April 9


TBA


Bharath Chelleboina, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacy Practice, University of Illinois Chicago (host: Jeremy Johnson)


Wednesday, April 16


Tuning a privileged chemical scaffold to target poorly characterized kinases


Alison Axtman, PhD, Assistant Professor, Structural Genomics Consortium UNC, Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry, Eshelman School of Pharmacy, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (host: Andrew Riley)


Wednesday, April 23


TBA


Katherine Paige Lemon, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Baylor College of Medicine (host: Nancy Freitag)


Wednesday, April 30

TBA


Allison Walker, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, Vanderbilt University (host: Alessandra Eustaquio)

Wednesday, May 7

NO SEMINAR (Finals Week)



NO SEMINAR


Course Coordinator: Matt Henke  | José Villegas