Graduate student Justine Delgado has been working in Rob Kerns’ lab for the past five years. She is interested in making drugs safer and more efficacious and has been working on how to target cancer more effectively.

Delgado came to the University of Iowa after completing a bachelor’s of science in chemistry at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. She enjoyed her chemistry classes and was interested in applying that knowledge to drug design and development.

She was drawn to the University of Iowa program because of the research Kerns was doing in his lab at the time working on antibiotics. She was looking for a traditional medicinal chemistry group and found that here. UI’s College of Pharmacy also offers opportunities to students that other colleges and university students do not have access to through the Center for Biocatalysis and Bioprocessing, which provides funding opportunities for graduate students during their time here.

Delgado is preparing to defend her doctoral thesis, "Design, Synthesis, and Evaluation of N-1 Aryl Fluoroquinolones for the Development of Human Topoisomerase Inhibitors," this month and is currently interviewing with two Universities for prospective post-doctoral positions.