Carmen Galan
Carmen Galan – Bristol University (UK)
M. Carmen Galan received her B.S. degree in chemistry from Universidad de Alicante, Spain. She was awarded a Socrates-Erasmus grant to pursue an MPhil in Pure and Applied Chemistry at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, under the supervision of Prof. P.J. Hall and Dr. L.E.A. Berlouis. She received her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center at The University of Georgia, USA, under the supervision of Prof. Geert-Jan Boons, where she carried out research in the field of carbohydrates involving oligosaccharide synthesis, enzymology and structural studies by NMR and molecular modelling. She then moved to California to pursue post-doctoral research with Prof. Chi-Huey Wong at The Scripps Research Institute, where she was involved in the preparation of glycopeptido mimetics for use as anti-inflammatory therapeutic agents and the development of better routes for the synthesis of N-, S- linked glycoconjugates. After that, she continued her post-doctoral training at Massachussetts Institute of Technology with Prof. Sarah O’Connor where she studied the biosynthetic pathways of alkaloids. Carmen returned to the UK in October 2006 on a lecturership in the School of Chemistry. In 2008 she became a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin fellow and from 2012-2017 she held a five year EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellowship. She currently holds and ERC consolidator award (from 2015) and since August 2017, the position of Professor in the School of Chemistry. The Galan group is interested in employing synthetic organic chemistry as a tool to probe and manipulate the structure and function of biologically relevant molecules to study life and disease processes. The ultimate goal is the development of new diagnostic tools for early detection of disease and targeted therapeutics.