Members

Professor David A. Spiegel was born in New York City, and grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey. From a very young age, he was fascinated by the chemistry and biology of small molecules, and at 16 began doing research in a neuroanesthesiology laboratory at the University of Iowa. He went on to attend Harvard University where he conducted research under the guidance of Professor Yoshito Kishi. After graduating from Harvard, David began in Yale University’s M.D./Ph.D. program. There he conducted graduate research in Professor John Wood’s laboratory focusing on developing synthetic approaches toward the phomoidrides. During the course of these studies, he discovered that trialkylborane-water complexes could function as H-atom donors in free radical reactions. Following graduation from Yale, Professor Spiegel moved back to Harvard for postdoctoral studies under the guidance of Professor Stuart L. Schreiber. There he focused on developing an oligomer-based method for small-molecule synthesis to enable the rapid assembly of skeletally diverse small molecules starting from simple monomers.

David began as an assistant Professor at Yale in June of 2007. Since that time, he has been fortunate to be named recipient of the Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.

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Rendy Kartika , Ph.D. was born and raised in Malang, Indonesia.  After graduating from Kolese Santo Yusup Catholic High School, he moved to Los Angeles. He attended Cal Poly Pomona University and graduated with a B.S. in chemistry.  He then moved to northern Indiana to pursue his Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame.  Under the direction of Prof. Richard E. Taylor, his graduate research comprised of synthetic methods development and total synthesis directed towards polyketide natural products. He is a huge Fighting Irish football fan and claims he bleeds gold and blue.  He joined the Spiegel Group in October 2008, and is currently working on the chemical synthesis of advanced glycation endproducts. Contact Rendy

Mariya Kolesnikova, Ph.D. was born in Yaroslavl, Russia. She went to Kolmogorov's boarding high school in Moscow. She completed her M.S. degree in chemistry at Moscow State University. Later, she moved to Houston, TX where she did her Ph.D. research at Rice University with Professor Seiichi P. T. Matsuda, studying triterpene biosynthesis. She joined the Spiegel Group in July, 2008, and is currently working on the development of new approaches that involve application of bi-functional molecules to treat infectious agents and cancer cells. Contact Mariya

Ryan Murelli, Ph.D. was born in Torrington, CT and went to high school at the Salisbury School in Salisbury, CT. After completing his B.A. in chemistry at Hamilton College he moved to Chestnut Hill, MA and did his Ph.D. work in the lab of Marc L. Snapper at Boston College. He joined the Spiegel group in September of 2007 and is currently working on developing small molecules to template the human immune response to target cancer cells and infectious agents. Contact Ryan

Charles Jakobsche, Ph.D. Chuck grew up in the suburbs of Boston, MA.  He graduated from Williams College in 2004 with a B.A. in chemistry with highest departmental honors, after working in J. H. Markgraf’s laboratory synthesizing analogues of natural product heterocyclic antibiotics.  He began graduate school at Boston College working in Scott J. Miller’s lab, developing peptide-based catalysts for enantio- and site-selective epoxidation and using alkene isosteres to study the mechanisms of these transformations.   Chuck moved to Yale with the Miller Group where he completed his Ph.D. in 2009. He joined the Spiegel Group, and his current work focuses on using small molecules to direct the human immune system to destroy cancerous or otherwise infected cells. Contact Chuck

James Nelson was born and raised in Newark, Delaware and attended the University of Delaware, graduating in 2007 with a B.S. in biochemistry and a B.A. in history. He did his undergraduate thesis work in the laboratory of Professor Kristi Kiick in the Department of Materials Science. His research in the Spiegel Lab is focused on the development of antibody-recruiting molecules directed against infectious agents.
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Maria Noy completed her undergraduate studies at UC, Santa Barbara (B.S., 2004) and then worked as a research associate at Gas Reaction Technologies, Inc. In 2006, she moved to the ITQ in Valencia, Spain, where she obtained her MS in chemistry under the guidance of Avelino Corma. In the Fall of 2008 she joined the graduate program at Yale. Her research interests include synthetic methods and natural products synthesis. In her spare time Maria enjoys weight-lifting, running, and climbing trees. She is also being introduced to extreme catamaran racing. Contact Maria

Patrick J. McEnaney was born in the wilderness of Massachusetts in 1984. After obtaining his B.S. in chemistry from UMASS Lowell in 2006, he worked for Konarka Technologies as a synthetic organic chemist focusing on conjugated polymers and dye molecules for organic solar cells. In June 2007, he joined the laboratory of Professor David A. Spiegel at Yale University. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. with research focused on the development of new methods for the chemical synthesis of proteins. Contact Pat

Christopher G. Parker was born in Lorain, OH in 1985, and grew up in Medina, OH. He graduated with Honors from Case Western Reserve University with a B.S. in Chemistry and a minor in Biology. As an undergrad, he worked in the lab of Professor Philip Garner. Chris joined the Spiegel Lab at Yale in 2007, and his current project is focused on the development of small molecule antibody recruiting therapeutics towards the treatment of infectious diseases. Contact Chris

Andrew X. Zhang was born in Beijing, China, in 1985. He came to the United States at age 5 to live with his parents, and in the meantime, got his first exposure to graduate school, as his parents were both pursuing their Ph.D.'s at SUNY at Stony Brook. After four years in the east coast, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to attend the University of California, Berkeley. There, he became a die-hard Cal football fan (basketball also, but to a lesser extent), while managing to learn some organic chemistry and molecular and cell biology. Currently in the Spiegel Laboratory he is developing new methods for targeting human antibodies to infectious agents. Contact Andrew

Taehan (Phil) Kim was born in South Korea in 1985. He spent all of his youth playing computer games with his friends and playing the violin for church. Upon realizing there was no future in playing computer games, and since he wasn’t very good with the violin, he decided to further his education. In 2008 he earned a BS with Honors in Forensic Chemistry from University of Toronto in the lab of Prof. Michael K. Georges. His current research in the Spiegel Group is directed at synthetic methodology development and application in total synthesis. Recently, Phil rediscovered the song “What Is Love” by Haddaway, and has been listening to it on repeat ever since. Contact Phil

Eugene Douglass was born in Decatur, IL and over the years lived in Florida, Micronesia, Hawaii and New Hampshire.  He obtained his B.S. from Worcester Polytechnic Institute where he worked in the lab of Dr. W. Grant McGimpsey and Dr. Christopher Lambert. He studied the electrochemistry Self-Assembled Monolayers (SAMs) and developed a platform for the use of SAMs in Microfluidic Sensors.  He joined the Spiegel Lab in 2008 and is currently developing models and analytical methods to quantitatively characterize antibody recruiting targets. Contact Eugene

Alexander G. Chamessian was born in Teaneck, New Jersey in 1986. In 2009 he graduated from Stony Brook University with a B.S. with Honors in Biochemistry and a minor in Chemistry. During his time at Stony Brook, Alex worked in the labs of Drs. Michael Frohman and Isaac Carrico, focusing on phosphoplipase D signaling and protein engineering, respectively. Shortly after graduating, Alex joined the Spiegel Lab as a research assistant. He will focus on furthering the development of antibody-recruiting molecules directed against infectious agents. When not in the lab, Alex enjoys cooking, reading, fishing and exercising. Contact Alex