Our Team
of enthusiastic scientists
Summer 2023
Lead Investigator
Dr. Jakob Magolan
Professor, Dept. of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences
Boris Family Chair of Drug Discovery
BSc (2002) Queen's University, Canada (R. Lemieux)
PhD (2007) Western University, Canada (M. Kerr)
Postdoc (2007-2010) Griffith University, Australia (M. Coster)
2010 - 2017, Assistant Professor, University of Idaho
2017 - 2023, Associate Professor, McMaster University
2023 - present, Professor, McMaster University
Research Associates
Dr. Jarrod Johnson
Research Associate
BSc & PhD: University of Waterloo (G. Dimitrienko)
Postdoctoral research: Notre Dame (S. Mobashery); McMaster (G. Wright)
Research Focus: Dr. Johnson contributes to the management of all research in our lab with an emphasis on antimicrobial medicinal chemistry projects.
Dr. Mathew Piotrowski
Research Associate
BSc & PhD: Western University, Canada (M. Kerr)
Postdoctoral research: McMaster University (J. Magolan)
Research focus: Dr. Pitrowski develops scalable syntheses of phenolic natural products of biomedical interest. His research is sponsored by a partnership between our lab and Naturally Synthetic Inc.
Dr. Lauren Irwin
Research Associate
BSc & PhD: Western University, Canada (M. Kerr)
Research focus: Dr. Irwin works on the syntheses of phenolic natural products of biomedical interest. Her research is sponsored by a partnership between our lab and Naturally Synthetic Inc.
Graduate Students - PhD Candidates
Matthew Squazzin
PhD Candidate, Biochemistry
BSc: University of Waterloo (R. Lemieux)
Research: cardiovascular medicinal chemistry; organosulfur synthetic methods
Nicole Ritchie
PhD Candidate, Chemistry
BSc: University of Waterloo (G. Murphy)
Research: antimicrobial medicinal chemistry
Lara Lima
PhD Candidate, Chemical Biology
BSc: Federal University of Ceara, Brazil
Research: antimicrobial medicinal chemistry; development of chemical tools to enable fast point-of-care diagnosis of antibiotic drug resistance.
Elizabeth Lach
MS Candidate, Chemical Biology
BSc: McMaster University (with Prof. Anthony Rullo)
Research: medicinal chemistry and synthetic methods
Princeton Luong
PhD Candidate, Chemical Biology
BSc: University of Waterloo (with Prof. Michael Chong)
Research: anti-cancer medicinal chemistry
Graduate Students - MSc Candidates
Ellie Wong
MS Candidate, Chemical Biology
BSc: University of Waterloo (with Prof. Graham Murphy)
Research: anti-cancer medicinal chemistry
Kaitlyn Breault
MS Candidate, Chemical Biology
BSc: University of Windsor (with Prof. John Trant)
Research: anti-cancer medicinal chemistry
Gary Wang
MS Candidate, Chemical Biology
BSc: McMaster University (in our lab)
Research: anti-cancer medicinal chemistry & natural products synthesis
Undergraduate Students
Philip Samokhin
Undergraduate Student, Chemical Biology
Keaton Peterson
Undergraduate Student, Biochemistry
Tyler Carmona
Undergraduate Student, Biochemistry
Simon Li
Undergraduate Student, Chemical Biology
Roxann Forget
Undergraduate Student, Biomedical Discovery and Commercialization
