Science at Cal “Diseases and Medicine In Sub-Saharan Africa” (UC Berkeley)

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Did you know that natural products serve as the basis of many new medicines? What are natural products and why are they important in chemistry? How has studying natural products provided an opportunity to understand limitations of chemical synthesis in medicinal drug production? Dr. Richmond Sarpong will address these questions as well as how his experiences growing up in Sub-Saharan Africa led to his career in synthetic organic chemistry. He will discuss his early influences, along with how he became interested in natural products and medicine.

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About our Speaker:
Richmond Sarpong is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of California Berkeley where he and his group specialize in synthetic organic chemistry. Richmond became interested in chemistry after seeing, firsthand, the effectiveness of the drug ivermectin in combating river blindness during his childhood in Ghana, West Africa. Richmond described his influences and inspirations in a TEDxBerkeley talk in 2015. Richmond completed his undergraduate studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN and his graduate work was carried out with Prof. Martin Semmelhack at Princeton. He conducted postdoctoral studies at Caltech with Prof. Brian Stoltz.

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