Our PhD program's concentration in Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products will equip students with the appropriate experimental and theoretical approaches to use or develop chemical tools for understanding and regulating biomedical processes. Our educational goal is to develop outstanding independent scientists with the knowledge, experience, and confidence to step into positions of leadership in academic, industrial, or governmental research.

We are training the next generation of scientists to explore new drugs in novel ways. Students leave the program with the ability to identify important unsolved problems in biology and medicine that can be effectively investigated with chemical approaches, as well as the skill set to provide novel solutions. Our degree recipients are well prepared for scientific careers in academia, industry, government, and research institutes. All of our graduates have been successful in finding desirable positions. Historically, the majority of our graduates have taken positions in the pharmaceutical industry. With the changes in the pharmaceutical industry in recent years, our graduates have been in increasing demand in biopharma companies. In addition, we have more and more graduates considering careers in academia.

For all graduate programs, the past decade has seen a trend of increasing participation in postdoctoral research after the PhD. An important measure of the success of our program is whether students are obtaining their first-choice postdocs. To a large extent, our recent graduates are receiving multiple offers from top labs. Our recent graduates have taken postdoc positions in prestigious labs at Harvard, Duke, Scripps, and MIT, just to name a few.