Current Lab Members

	Paul Thompson, PhD Principal Investigator Professor and Director of Chemical Biology  LRB 825 Tel: 508-856-8492 Dr. Paul Thompson received his BSc and PhD degrees from McMaster University in Canada before moving to the US to take a postdoctoral position with Philip Cole at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.  Paul then moved to the University of South Carolina to begin his independent career before moving to the Department of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute, Scripps Florida, in May 2010.  Paul subsequently moved to UMASS Med in Aug 2014.  Paul has published more than 138 articles in major scientific journals including Nature, Cell, Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, and the Journal of the American Chemical Society.  Paul has also won a number of awards including a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Postdoctoral Fellowship and a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.
	Heather Loring Graduate Student LRB 860C   Heather’s research is focused on characterizing the enzymatic mechanism and structure of SARM1, a novel NAD glycohydrolase that plays an important role in neuronal cell death and peripheral neuropathy. The development of inhibitors targeting this enzyme will provide therapeutic benefit for a range of diseases.
	Santanu Mondal, PhD Postdoctoral Associate LRB 860C   Santanu is currently working on the design, synthesis and biological evaluation of inhibitors targeting the PAD family of enzymes. His work also focuses on the development of isozyme-selective inhibitors and probes for the PADs.
	Mitesh Nagar, PhD Postdoctoral Associate LRB 860C Tel: 508-856-8874   Mitesh’s research is focused on identifying “Readers” of citrullination as well as a putative decitrullinase. This effort uses a combination of chemical biology tools and proteomics to identify these interpreters of citrullination.
	Padmavathy Nandha Premnath, PhD Postdoctoral Associate LRB 860C   Padma is currently working on the design, synthesis and biological evaluation of inhibitors targeting the PAD family of enzymes. Her research is specifically focused on the development of a PAD3 specific inhibitor and using this compound to decipher the biology of this poorly characterized PAD isozyme.
	Venkatesh Nemmara, PhD Postdoctoral Associate LRB 860C   Venky’s research is focused on using proteomic approaches to uncover the targets and off targets of our PAD selective inhibitors as well as using proteomic methods to identify the citrullinated biomarkers associated with rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and breast cancer.
	Sangram Parelkar, PhD Sr. Research Scientist Manager of Small Molecule Screening Facility  LRB 860D   Using High Throughput and High Content based biochemical and cellular approaches, Sangram is working towards discovering novel small molecule therapeutic candidates for various biological processes. More info about SMSF: http://www.umassmed.edu/smsf/
	Ari Salinger, PhD Postdoctoral Associate LRB 860C   Ari is currently focused on using chemoproteomic methods to identify citrullinated proteins and disease associated biomarkers.  This work is being performed jointly with the Weerapana group at Boston College.
	Sudeshna Sen, PhD Postdoctoral Associate LRB 860C   Sudeshna’s current research is focused on characterizing the catalytic mechanism and developing activity based probes forNNMT, a nicotinamide methyltransferase whose activity is aberrantly upregulated in cancer and other diseases. Inhibitors targeting NNMT represent promising anti-cancer therapeutics.
	Ronak Tilvawala, PhD Postdoctoral Associate LRB 860C   Ronak is currently focused on identifying citrullinated biomarkers associated with Rheumatoid Arthritis and breast cancer.  In addition, Ronak is studying the functional impact of these citrullination events on protein function, enzymatic activity and the generation of antibodies targeting citrullinated proteins.
	Li Zheng, PhD Postdoctoral Associate LRB 860C Tel: 508-856-8872   Li’s research is focused on identifying the factors that modulate the calcium dependence of the PADs using a combination of chemical proteomics to identify candidate interacting proteins mutagenesis of known post-translational modifications sites.