University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
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02/17/2012

William Pomerantz joins Department of Chemistry faculty

William “Will” Pomerantz, Ph.D., is joining the Department of Chemistry as an assistant professor. He will be joining the department this summer.

Since 2009, Pomerantz has been a National Institute of Health National Research Service Award postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan in the group of Professor Anna Mapp. He earned his doctorate in organic chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison working with Professor Sam Gellman and Chemical and Biological Engineering Professor Nicholas Abbott, was a Seydel/Fulbright Fellow at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology with Professor François Diederich, and received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Ithaca College.

Pomerantz is interested in modulating the function of protein-protein interactions through the use of small molecules and bio-inspired peptide scaffolds. His research uses organic synthesis, biophysical, biochemistry and molecular biology techniques to investigate the folding/misfolding and disease pathways of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs). His research interests exploit the bio-orthogonality and the hypersensitivity of fluorine chemical shifts to changes in chemical environment for probing important protein-protein interactions of structurally challenging proteins and to ultimately explore their behavior in cells (in-cell nuclear magnetic resonance). This research is complemented with established biophysical techniques, organic synthesis of chemical probes, and new peptide-based strategies for pre-organization and cellular delivery for studying challenging IDPs under physiological conditions.