NIH Fellowship Program

Ruth L. Kirschstein Institutional National Research Service Award (NRSA)
Predoctoral Training: Innovative Technologies for Natural Products and Integrative Medicine
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Our National Institutes of Health funded “Predoctoral Training: Innovative Technologies for Natural Products and Integrative Medicine” is one of only three institutional predoctoral training awards (T32) in basic science supported by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Situated within the Medicinal Chemistry Collaborative, this program supports four PhD students enrolled in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UNCG. An additional trainee is funded by an individual (F31) National Institutes of Health predoctoral fellowship grant. The NIH fellowship program prepares trainees for independent research careers with a combination of mentored laboratory research, scientific coursework, seminars, hands on training, and internships. An important element of this work is hands on training in our outstanding NMR and mass spectrometry facilities, where trainees design experiments, operate instrumentation and carry out data analysis. Our trainees regularly present their work at conferences, including national meetings of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, the American Society of Pharmacognosy, and the International Conference of the Metabolomics Society. Our program has a strong commitment to diversity and inclusiveness, and our mentors and trainees participate in multiple outreach programs to provide STEM education opportunities to young people, particularly those from groups historically underrepresented in the sciences.

Our Current Fellows

Gabrielle Dailey

Derick Jones

Amber Kelley

Sonja Knowles

Heather Winter

Internal Steering Committee

Nadja Cech – UNCG Chemistry & Biochemistry

Nicholas Oberlies – UNCG Chemistry & Biochemistry

Zhenquan Jia – UNCG Biology

Patricia Reggio – UNCG Chemistry & Biochemistry

External Advisory Board

Heather Zwickey – National University of Natural Medicine

Ilya Raskin – Rutgers University

Joanna Burdette – University of Illinois Chicago

To learn more about the science being carried out by our trainees, please check out these featured publications:

“Biochemometrics to Identify Synergists and Additives from Botanical Medicines: A Case Study with Hydrastis canadensis (Goldenseal)”
Emily R. Britton, Joshua J. Kellogg, Olav M. Kvalheim, and Nadja B. Cech
Journal of Natural Products, 2018, 81 (3), pp.484-493
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jnatprod.7b00654

“Integration of Biochemometrics and Molecular Networking to Identify Antimicrobials in Angelica keiskei“
Lindsay K. Caesar, Joshua J. Kellogg, Olav M. Kvalheim, Richard A. Cech, Nadja B. Cech
Planta Medica, 2018
DOI: 10.1055/a-0590-5223

“Hierarchical cluster analysis of technical replicates to identify interferents in untargeted mass spectrometry metabolomics”
Lindsay K. Caesar, Olav M. Kvalheim, Nadja B. Cech
Analytica Chimica Acta, Vol. 1021, August 2018, pp. 69-77
doi.org/10.1016/j.aca.2018.03.013