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A native of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Edwin Alfonzo earned his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Massachusetts Lowell before completing his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at Boston University in 2020. There, he developed the first unified approach to the lignan family of natural products, prized for their rich biological activity. During his doctoral studies, he also conducted summer research at Novartis in Cambridge, MA, where he worked within the new modalities group and gained exposure to the broad use of bioconjugation reactions in modern therapeutic development. Following his Ph.D., he spent a year at AstraZeneca in the oncology group, further expanding his experience in medicinal chemistry, before retuning to academia. He then joined the Frances H. Arnold laboratory at Caltech, first as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow and later as an NIH K99/R00 awardee, where he contributed to several key advances in enzymatic nitrene transfer, including the development of hydroxylamine as an aminating reagent, the amination of abiotic organoborons, and the biocatalytic synthesis of non-canonical amino acids. Edwin joined the Department of Chemistry at Duke University in the summer of 2025. His group focuses on discovering new-to-nature and chemocatalytic reactions for the synthesis of important small and large molecules—including pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and bioconjugates—as well as applications in bioremediation. Email: edwin.alfonzo@duke.edu |
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Awards and Honors
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