Njoo Research Group

Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Physical Science

"If medicine were like software...
...then organic chemistry is the boot code."

What we do

We live in a molecular world, where we aim to develop molecular solutions to real-world problems.

We are organic chemists, and we seek to inform the future of scientific development with atomistic resolution.

This is accomplished through chemical synthesis, computational modeling, high resolution spectroscopy, and chemical biology. Our research interests include green methodology towards complex natural product synthesis, quantitative reaction monitoring by benchtop NMR, and small molecule therapeutics to target antibiotic-resistant bacteria, HIV, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases.

Questions? Email us at njoogroup@asdrp.org.

Chemical Biology

We harness the ability to design and tailor chemical entities to study biological systems, including the chemical physics of biocatalytic reactions, the discovery of cell cycle regulating compounds, and development of tool compounds for high resolution optical readouts of biological systems.

Natural Product Synthesis

Nature has produced an arsenal of structurally complex and biologically relevant small molecules. Our current efforts involve semisynthesis of novel derivatives of labdane diterpenoids towards anticancer treatment and total synthesis of cyclic peptide natural products.

Spectroscopy

Spectroscopic kinetic monitoring of enzyme-catalyzed chemical conversions can be harnessed to yield mechanistic insight into reactivity, reaction rate, and mechanism.

Physical Organic Chemistry

This branch of chemistry provides insight into the fundamental theories governing chemical reactivity, specifically allowing the harnessing of these trends for more efficient and convenient syntheses of organic molecules.

Catalysis & Reaction Development

We aim to engineer new and increasingly efficient reactions that harness excited state electronic systems for photocatalytic transformations and in the development of organometallic catalysts for green oxidation and asymmetric C-C and C-F bond formation.

Computational & Theoretical Chemistry

High-throughput virtual screening approaches such as protein-ligand docking & molecular dynamic simulations, machine learning platform for drug discovery, and density functional theory (DFT) aid in informed reactivity analyses

Medicinal Chemistry & Drug Discovery

Our drug discovery efforts involve synthesizing small molecule novel cancer, HIV, and neurodegenerative therapeutics through the usage of synthetic organic chemistry methods.