Ruben Abagyan
Ruben received his PhD in biophysics from the Moscow State University and his tenure in biochemistry and mathematics from New York University and the Courant Institute of Mathematics. He was a Director of Computational Sciences at the Novartis Institute for Functional Genomics, and a Professor at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla before joining the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at UCSD. The Abagyan research laboratory develops and applies methods for molecular modeling, structure based discovery and optimization of drug candidates, target identification, large scale bio- and chemo-informatics. His team introduced and developed the structural Pocketomes for different organisms and used it for repurposing of drugs for different pathogens and indications.
Follow Ruben at: http://ablab.ucsd.edu
Jehad Almaliti
Jehad Almaliti obtained his Bachelor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Jordan in 2007 and earned his Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry from the University of Toledo in 2013. He then relocated for two years to San Diego, California, where he joined the University of California San Diego as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of distinguished professor, Dr. William Gerwick. Currently, Jehad serves as an associate professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Jordan and holds a visiting professor position at the University of California San Diego. He has been the recipient of numerous national and international research grants and awards, including the prestigious international scholar award from the Saint Baldrick’s Foundation. Jehad's current research is centered around the discovery of novel proteasome inhibitors aimed at treating various parasitic diseases such as malaria, leishmaniasis, naegleriasis and trypanosomiasis. His multidisciplinary contributions to the field of drug discovery have resulted in the publication of over 30 articles in highly esteemed journals, and the registration of three US patents.
Jehad's current bibliography can be found at: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=4ZZ85rEAAAAJ&hl=en
Carlo Ballatore
Carlo Ballatore is a Professor at University of California San Diego (UCSD) Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and a medicinal chemist with >20 years of experience in drug discovery in both the biotechnology (~3 years) and academic drug discovery settings. Carlo graduated in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technologies at University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Rome, Italy. He obtained a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Wales, Cardiff, U.K.. Over the past several years the primary focus of Carlo’s research has been in the areas of protein-protein interaction inhibitors and stabilizers with specific programs directed towards the development of microtubule-stabilizing agents for CNS indications. The Ballatore lab has thus far trained >30 pre and postdoctoral students.
Emmanuel Oluwadare Balogun
Emmanuel is an early-career Scientist with research focus on Biochemical and Molecular Parasitology, and special interest on rational intervention (drug, vaccine, and diagnostics) development for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). After his BSc and MSc degrees in Biochemistry from Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, Nigeria, Emmanuel was awarded the Japanese Government (MEXT) Scholarship for his doctoral studies at the Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Japan (2007‐2011). In 2012, Emmanuel was selected for a postdoctoral fellowship by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and utilized the grant to determine the structure of African trypanosomes glycerol kinase (ATGK), elucidated its reaction mechanism, and optimized a high throughput screening-compatible method for ATGK. After his postdoc, Emmanuel returned to his faculty position at ABU as a lecturer (2016) and was recently promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. Emmanuel is a recipient of numerous globally competitive awards such as the Fulbright Senior Research Scholarship award from Council for International Exchange of Scholars, USA (2018); Future Leaders- Africa Independent Research (FLAIR) fellow by The Royal Society, UK (2019); Gold Medal Merit Award for Science from Nigerian Academy Sciences (2019); Emerging Global Leader Award from Fogarty International Center, National Institute of Health (NIH), USA (2021); and the U.S.-Africa Frontiers Fellowship Award from The USA National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. Emmanuel is a mentee of Professor James McKerrow and a Visiting Scholar to CDIPD/Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, UCSD where he collaborates with multiple PIs.
Emmanuel's current bibliography can be found at:
William Fenical
William (Bill) Fenical is currently a Distinguished Professor of Oceanography and Pharmaceutical Science and was the Founding Director of SIO’s Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine. Bill’s research interests have focused on the field of marine natural products chemistry, chemical ecology and drug discovery. For the past 25+ years his interests have been to develop marine microbial resources as a source for new drug discovery. His efforts have resulted in two drugs, currently in late phase III human trials for the treatment of glioblastoma (brain) and non-small cell lung cancers. Recently, Bill’s interests have expanded to include parasitic diseases.
Bill has received numerous awards, among them the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of California, Riverside, the Paul Scheuer Award in Marine Natural Products Chemistry, the Silver Medal Award from the International Society of Chemical Ecology, the National Cancer Institute’s Merit Award, the American Chemical Society’s Ernest Guenther Award for the Study of Natural Products and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Pharmacognosy. In 2008, Bill was elected as a Fellow of the American Association of Science, and in 2015 he was honored as Scientist of the Year by the San Diego Regional American Chemical Society. More recently Bill was nominated as a member of the Sigma Xi Honor Society.
Bill’s publication record can be found at: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0cXxInEAAAAJ&hl=en
William Gerwick
Bill Gerwick’s research focuses on the bioactive natural products of marine algae and cyanobacteria, their application in biomedicine especially to parasitic diseases, their biosynthesis using genomic approaches, and the development of new methods in structure analysis. He earned a BS in Biochemistry at UC Davis, a PhD in Marine Chemistry at Scripps/UCSD, and did postdoctoral work in biosynthesis at U Connecticut. After a junior faculty position in Chemistry at the U Puerto Rico, Bill spent 21 years at Oregon State U in the College of Pharmacy. In 2005 he returned to his PhD institution at Scripps (UC San Diego) where he currently holds the position of Distinguished Professor of Oceanography and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Bill is an elected Fellow of the American Society of Pharmacognosy and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). His research group has published over 450 research papers and holds 26 patents, and he has trained approximately 100 PhD and postdoctoral scholars in his 40-year career in the natural products sciences.
Bill's current bibliography can be found at these resources: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Gerwick%2C+WH and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/william.gerwick.1/bibliography/public/
Laura-Isobel McCall
Laura-Isobel McCall is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at San Diego State University. She earned a BSc (honors) and a PhD from McGill University in Microbiology and Immunology. She pursued postdoctoral training at the University of California San Francisco and the University of California San Diego. Laura-Isobel established her laboratory in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Oklahoma in 2017. In 2020, she was selected as one of Chemical and Engineering News’ Talented 12: one of the “dozen young rising stars who are using chemical know-how to change the world”. She was also selected in 2021 as a “Future leader in the field of host-microbe interactions” by Infection and Immunity, and was a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease. Laura-Isobel moved her laboratory to San Diego State University in August 2023. Her research focuses on using spatially resolved metabolomics to understand host-pathogen-microbiome interactions, to guide drug development and biomarker discovery. More information on Laura-Isobel's research can be found here.
Diane Thomas
Diane is a Staff Research Associate at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences with >25 years of experience establishing laboratory disease models and testing therapeutic candidates in these models. She earned her B.S. in Biology at UCSD in 1995 and has studied disease pathogenesis and worked on drug discovery, vaccine development, and tumor targeting and imaging projects in both academic and biotechnology laboratories. Diane has worked extensively on both infectious and non-infectious diseases and has experience with a wide range of therapeutic strategies. In recent years, Diane has been involved with drug discovery for neglected tropical diseases.
Elizabeth Winzeler
Elizabeth Ann Winzeler is a Professor at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine where she is PI of the Winzeler lab. Her lab uses systematic, data-intensive methods to solve problems at the interface of host-pathogen biology typically involving large collections of chemical screening data and whole genome sequencing. She is also the program director of the Malaria Drug Accelerator (MalDA), a consortium of 18 different laboratories that have individually developed and maintained many of the platforms that contribute to early-stage anti-malaria drug development including target discovery and validation. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. She has published more than 200 publications. She has received awards from: the Keck Foundation, the Ellison Medical Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the 2014 Bailey-Ashford Medal, the 2017 Medicines of Malaria Venture Project of the Year, the 2018 Alice and C.C. Wang Award, the 2018 William Trager Award, the 2020 Rady Children’s Hospital Awards of Excellence in Basic Research, the 2020 UCSD Health Sciences Women Leadership Award and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2021.
