Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology

NEW FACULTY

Jeff Johnston joined the VICB in 2006, concomitant with his appointment as Professor of Chemistry at Vanderbilt. He obtained his B.S. in Chemistry (Honors, summa cum laude) from Xavier University in 1992. As a graduate student, he trained in natural product total synthesis at The Ohio State University with Prof. Leo Paquette, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in Chemistry. As an NIH postdoctoral fellow with Prof. David Evans at Harvard University, he worked in the area of enantioselective Lewis acid catalysis. Jeff began at Indiana University in 1999 and was promoted to Professor in 2005. His research program focuses on the development of new methods to activate and control organic reactions, as well as the total synthesis of natural products. The products of these reactions include chiral nonracemic secondary amines, a-amino acids, a-amino phosphonic acids, diamines, and heterocycles (e.g. aziridines and indolines). His research program has been recognized by several organizations, including the Boehringer-Ingelheim New Investigator Award, the Yamanouchi/Astellas faculty awards, an Amgen Young Investigator Award, and an Eli Lilly Grantee Award.

Craig Lindsley was recruited jointly by the Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology, the Department of Pharmacology and the Department of Chemistry, joining in September 2006 as Associate Professor. Craig earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of California, Santa Barabra in the Lipshutz laboratory developing novel bi-directional organometallic linchpins for all-E polyene synthesis. Then as an ICCB postdoctoral fellow in the labs of Matt Shair at Harvard University, Craig developed a solid phase biomimetic synthesis of carpanone-like molecules. After brief stints at Parke-Davis and Eli Lilly, Craig joined Merck where he established and led the Technology Enabled Synthesis (TES) group as a senior research fellow/group leader in the medicinal chemistry department. By application of an iterative parallel synthesis approach in combination with microwave synthesis technology and a custom, mass-directed preparative LCMS platform, Craig’s TES group rapidly developed proof of concept compounds for nascent programs as well as four preclinical candidates with only 1-2 chemists/project. Upon arriving at Vanderbilt, Craig has built a new TES lab to develop nascent Vanderbilt programs and perform translational research within the VICB Program in Drug Discovery. His current research interests are drug discovery, medicinal chemistry and traditional organic synthesis.