13th Annual Riley O. Schaeffer Lecture

When: Fri, Nov 11 2022 4:00pm

Where: Clark Hall Lecture Hall 101

The Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology is thrilled to welcome Dr. Dennis A Dougherty of California Institute of Technology as our honored speaker for 13^th Annual Riley O. Schaeffer Endowed Lectureship. The lecture is will be “Chemistry on the Brain: Understanding the Nicotine Receptor”.

This is the premier lecture held by the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and the first since 2019 due to the pandemic. This lectureship was established in 2008 in honor of Professor Riley Schaeffer through contributions from UNM faculty, past students of Professor Schaeffer at Indiana University and UNM and friends and external colleagues.

About the Speaker

Dennis A. Dougherty is the George Grant Hoag Professor of Chemistry and the Norman Davidson Leadership Chair in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. After a B.S. at Bucknell University, he earned his Ph.D. at Princeton with Kurt Mislow, and then did postdoctoral work with Jerome Berson at Yale. Dougherty is perhaps best known for the development of the cation-π interaction, a powerful noncovalent binding interaction that is widely employed in both small molecule and macromolecular recognition in biology and chemistry. His current research is focused on molecular neurobiology, applying the mindset and tools of physical organic chemistry to the complex proteins of neuroscience.

Link: Schaeffer Lecture