Activities & Awards

• Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Postdoctoral Recognition Award, 2019
• Indiana University, Department of Chemistry, Marvin Carmack Fellowship, Fall 2016
• Indiana University, Department of Chemistry, Associate Instructor Teaching Award, 2014

Research Interests

Recently, human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) have been implicated for their roles in promoting the healthy development of the brain-gut microbiota axis of a neonate. However, their numerous potential structural permutations make their accurate analyses and characterization increasingly difficult. To better understand how, why, and what, specific HMOs influence the relationship between the brain, gut, and immune system of an infant, better analytical tools are desperately needed. To solve this puzzle, we will focus on the development of a bioanalytical workbench consisting of a new multidimensional separations platform to be used in conjunction with various solution and gas-phase chemical probes to enable better separation and characterization of this highly diverse class of unconjugated glycans. Additionally, the use of accelerated reactions in microdroplets will permit rapid syntheses of biomedically-relevant glycan standards. This proposed bioanalytical toolbox will pave the way for de novo human milk oligosaccharide characterization, enabling advances in disease, clinical, and microbiome research.

Core research topics include:

1) Implementation and application of a new recycling liquid chromatography-ion mobility spectrometry-mass spectrometry (recycling LC-IMS-MS) platform for high-resolution human milk oligosaccharide analyses

2) Design of a chemical probes toolbox to enable more confident identification of unknown glycans

3) Development of accelerated reactions in microdroplets for rapid syntheses of carbohydrate building blocks and biomedically-relevant glycans

4) Understanding mass distribution-based shifts in high-resolution ion mobility separations