Antibacterials

Ana Victoria Cheng Jaramillo earned her B.A. in chemistry from the New College of Florida in 2017 before beginning her graduate studies in the chemistry department at Emory University. She is currently developing small molecule inhibitors of the bacterial SOS response, work for which she was awarded a Predoctoral National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health. She has also been recognized with a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program Honorable Mention, Emory Chemistry Quayle Spectrum Scholar Award, and a Science ATL Communication Fellowship. As a queer, Chinese, Colombian, first-generation American, she is passionate about social justice and representation in higher education. She spends her free time skating for Atlanta Roller Derby and spoiling her dog, Pip.

William M. Wuest was born on Long Island, NY in 1981. He obtained his B.S. degree magna cum laude in chemistry/business from the University of Notre Dame (Paul Helquist) in 2003 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania (Amos B. Smith, III) in 2008. After an NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellowship with Christopher T. Walsh at Harvard Medical School, he joined the faculty in the department of chemistry at Temple University as an assistant professor in 2011 where he stayed until 2017 as the Daniel Swern Early Career Development Professor. He moved his research group to Atlanta, GA, where he is currently a Georgia Research Alliance Distinguished Investigator & Associate Professor at Emory University. Research in the Wuest group focuses on the diverted total synthesis of antibacterial natural products. For this, he and his group have received numerous awards including the NSF CAREER Award, ACS Medicinal Chemistry David W. Robertson Award, the ACS Infectious Diseases Young Investigator Award, the New Investigator Award from the Charles E. Kaufman Foundation, and the Italia-Eire Foundation Distinguished Teacher of the Year Award at Temple University.