Faculty & Staff

Janet Yang received her BS from Yale University and then promptly headed for the West Coast. She attended the University of California San Francisco for her PhD in Biochemistry, and then did her postdoctoral work at the California Institute of Technology. Prof. Yang has always been fascinated by molecular motor proteins that harness the energy from ATP binding and hydrolysis to perform work in the cell. Her research uses quantitative thermodynamic and kinetic measurements to understand how these...

Amrita Bhattacharyya is an environmental geochemist. After completing her BS in Chemistry and MS in Environmental Chemistry from University of Calcutta, India, she moved to the USA to pursue her PhD in Environmental Chemistry at Pennsylvania State University. She continued to pursue her research in environmental chemistry as a post-doctoral fellow at Colorado State University before joining the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2015.

At USF...

Aleksandra Dimitrijevic Stamenov received her B.S. and Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Faculty of Chemistry, University of Belgrade, Serbia. For her thesis work she investigated activity and stability of microbial enzymes and their application in non aqueous catalysis. After graduate school she first completed a short training in proteomics and MALDI imaging mass spectrometry at INRA-Angers-Nantes Centre, France and then joined the lab of Dr. Dana Aswad at UC Irvine, for her postdoctoral work...

Professor Evbuomwan received her BS in Chemistry with a minor in Mathematics from Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho in May 2006. Later that year, she joined the chemistry program at the University of Texas at Dallas where she received her PhD in Chemistry under the supervision of A. Dean Sherry. Evbuomwan spent an additional year at UT Dallas as a postdoctoral research associate after which she was selected as one of ten Madrid-MIT M+Vision Postdoctoral Research Fellows at MIT. In...

William Karney received his BA from Haverford College and his PhD in organic chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to his position at USF he did postdoctoral work at the University of Washington and the University of California, Berkeley.

At USF, William teaches organic chemistry and environmental chemistry. His research, performed in collaboration with Professor Claire Castro, involves the use of computational chemistry to understand the structures, energetics, and...

Herman Nikolayevskiy received his BE in Chemical Engineering from Cooper Union, a primarily-undergraduate institution in the heart of NYC. After a transformative undergraduate research experience, Herman was inspired to pursue a PhD in Organic Chemistry at Yale University, where he focused on the total synthesis and computational analysis of bioactive natural products under Professor Seth B. Herzon. After leaving New Haven, Herman did his postdoctoral work at the National Institutes of Health...

Natalia Powers-Riggs received her bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University, where she double majored in Chemistry and East Asian Studies. She completed her PhD at Northwestern University where she used X-ray scattering and time-resolved optical spectroscopy to study structure and photoactivity of organic assemblies. She then joined the Solution Phase Chemistry group in the PULSE Institute at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory as a postdoctoral researcher, where she used X-ray scattering and...

Tami Spector received her bachelor's from Bard College, her PhD from Dartmouth College, and was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota. She teaches Organic Chemistry I and II, Organic laboratory I and II, and Molecular Gastronomy: The Science of the Food We Eat.

Trained as a physical organic chemist, her scientific work has focused on fluorocarbons, the transformations of strained ring organics, and the molecular dynamics and free energy calculations of biomolecular systems...

Michael Stevenson obtained a BS in biochemistry from the University of Washington and a PhD in chemistry from Dartmouth College. After graduate school, he first completed postdoctoral work at Ohio State University before going on to his second postdoctoral appointment at University of California, Davis. 

The Stevenson Group at USF studies the interplay between antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) and metals. Students in the group learn peptide biochemistry, coordination chemistry, spectroscopy, and...

Dr. Jennifer Tripp received a bachelor's degree in chemistry from USF, and went on to earn a PhD in chemistry from UC Berkeley. Upon receiving her doctorate, she was granted an NSF International Fellowship supporting a two-year postdoctoral research appointment at the University of Oxford, where she developed novel separation techniques for archaeological biomolecules.

In 2017, after teaching chemistry at the University of Scranton, San Francisco State University, and the University of San...

Hua-Kuang received his BS in Minneapolis from the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities and his Ph.D. from Michigan State University. His computational chemistry dissertation work focused on interaction/collision-induced dipole of Hydrogen systems. Hua-Kuang was appointed as a chemistry adjunct instructor at Lone Star College System. Hua-Kuang joined USF as an adjunct professor in chemistry in the fall of 2022.

Dr. Joseph Leonetti (USF Chemistry degree) went to U.C. Santa Barbara for his Ph.D. with Professor Dan Little doing di-radical chemistry and organic electrochemistry.  He did post-doctoral work at U. Cambridge synthesizing proton conducting polymer membranes with applications for fuel cells.  He has worked for several US companies and is now Project Manager at Genentech managing teams making new drugs.  His research interests lie at the interface of organic, polymer, and biochemistry.  Dr...

Raffaele Perrotta received his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 2012 and his BS in Chemistry from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2003. Dr. Perrotta worked as a Post-Doc in Dr. Daniel E. Falvey's research group from 2012-2013 at the University of Maryland. Prior to coming to USF, Dr. Perrotta was an Adjunct Chemistry Instructor at Holy Names University in 2022, a Chemistry Lecturer at UC Berkeley in the summer of 2023, a Chemistry Lecturer at UC...

Dr. Richter received her BS in Biochemistry and Philosophy from Beloit College, a small private liberal arts college in Beloit, WI, in 2015. She then joined the Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics program at the University of Pennsylvania, where she completed her PhD dissertation on the transcriptional regulation of adipose metabolism. In 2022, she moved to San Francisco to pursue postdoctoral research at the Gladstone Institutes, a non-profit research center affiliated with UCSF. There, she...

Cayce Shaw received her BS from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she majored in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and was a four-year starter on the NCAA women's soccer team. She then completed her Ph.D. at University of California, San Francisco where her thesis investigated the biochemical and enzymatic mechanisms of Kdm6a, a lysine demethylase (H3K27me2/3) known to escape X chromosome inactivation in the brain.

Claire Castro received her BA in Botany from UC Berkeley and her PhD in Organic Chemistry from UCLA. Her dissertation work focused on the synthesis of nucleoside analogs as anti-viral agents. After a short stint as a lecturer and post-doctoral scholar at UCLA, Claire joined the faculty at USF in 1994. Although she formally retired in 2017, she continues to teach on a part-time basis in the organic chemistry curriculum (the Medicinal/Synthetic Track). In addition, she, continues to work with her...

Professor Margerum started his professional career at the Clorox Technical Center investigating bleach stable metal chelates. He spend four years at Nycomed Salutar Imaging in Sunnyvale leading a team of scientists developing a Gd(III) contrast agent for blood imaging. He joined USF as assistant professor of analytical and inorganic chemistry and is currently professor emeritus with continuing interests in chemical education.

Prior to joining the University of San Francisco, Dr. Meloni carried out post-doctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley and at Sandia National Laboratories. In his research, he employed state-of-the-art experimental and computational techniques, to study semiconductor clusters, van der Waals species, and hydrocarbon radicals. Dr. Meloni's interests range from high-temperature physical chemistry to spectroscopic characterization of reaction intermediates. More recently, his...