Dr. Monica McCallum, currently a postdoctoral associate at Harvard University, will be joining the faculty of Penn Chemistry in 2021.
Dr. McCallum attended the University of California, Irvine, receiving a B.A. degree in Chemistry in 2011. There, she conducted her undergraduate research with Prof. Bruce Blumberg and Prof. Ken Shea. She then went to Colorado State University, where she carried out research under Prof. John Wood in the area of natural product total synthesis. When the Wood laboratory moved to Baylor University, she accompanied Prof. Wood and finished her doctoral training there in 2016. After graduation, she accepted a postdoctoral position in the laboratory of Prof. Emily Balskus in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. As a prestigious Damon Runyan Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. McCallum is now extending her skills in the general area of natural products biosynthesis, working in the areas of microbial chemistry, bioinformatics, and fluorescent microscopy.
Her appointment will begin January 1, 2021.