News

March 26, 2023: Congratulations to our incredible post-doc Dr. Catherine Denning-Jannace for being awarded the Biological Chemistry Research Award from the ACS Division of Biological Chemistry! Truly well deserved!

February 13, 2023: Congratulations to Dr. Joanna Campbell (Franz Lab PhD #20) for successfully defending her dissertation! We’re proud of you and all you’ve accomplished!

October 7, 2022: Congratulations Catherine for receiving the Outstanding Post Doc Award! Truly a well deserved recognition for such an incredible scientist and person!

September 4, 2022: Congratulations to Natalie for passing her Prelim Exam!

April 19, 2022: Congratulations to Amy for passing her Prelim Exam!

April 13, 2022: Congratulations to Addison for passing his Prelim Exam!

April 5, 2022: Congratulations Sean for winning the 2022 ACS Award for Outstanding Performance in Inorganic Chemistry!

April 4, 2022: Congratulations on passing your Prelim Exam, Leah!

October 22, 2021: Catherine received a Carl Storm Underrepresented Minority Fellowship!

October 18, 2021: Catherine and Joanna presented at the Gordon Research Conference!

October 4, 2021: Joanna, Katie, and Sara presented at the Chemistry Research Symposium!

September 17, 2021: Kathy has received the 2021 ACS Charles H. Stone Award!

August 6, 2021: Sean and Seth presented their research at the 2021 Chemistry Summer Undergraduate Mini-Symposium and Poster Session. Great work this summer!

July 14, 2021: It’s Tyler‘s last day in the Franz Lab, he is starting a new job at Syngenta RTP as a Senior Mass Spectrometrist. Good luck at your new job, Tyler!

May 14, 2021: It’s Jacqueline‘s last day in the Franz Lab, she is starting a new job at BioAgilytix. Best of luck at your new job, Jacqueline!

May 8, 2021: The Franz Lab spends some time in the sun at Spring Haven Farm.

May 2, 2021: Congratulations to the three Franz Lab undergraduate researchers who have graduated as part of Duke Class of 2021!! We are proud of all of your accomplishments and are excited to see what you all do next! Way to go Akasha, Christine, and Logan!!

April 19, 2021: Congratulations to Sara for passing her preliminary exam!

April 15, 2021: Congratulations to Katie for passing her preliminary exam!

April 2021: The Franz Lab welcomes new graduate student Leah Bontreger!

March 29, 2021: Congratulations to Joanna for passing her proposal exams! Excellent Job!

March 8, 2021: Lizzie‘s paper on the relationship between copper availability and Fluconazole stress in Candida albicans was published in G3!

January 22, 2021: Check out Anton and Logan‘s paper on mechanically coupled carbene dissociation mechanisms in JACS.

December 11, 2020: Check out Jacqueline‘s new paper on the targets of copper toxicity in E. coli in ACS Chemical Biology!

November, 2020: The Franz Lab officially welcomes two new graduate students, Addison Duda and Amy Robison!!

November 19, 2020: Check out Abbey and Tyler‘s latest paper on NDM-1 inhibitors published in ChemMedChem!

November 17, 2020: Congratulations to Dr. Jacqueline Zaengle-Barone (Franz Lab PhD #19), who successfully defended her dissertation virtually!

October 27, 2020: It’s Abbey Jackson‘s last day with the Franz Lab! Abbey is starting a new job at Baebies. Best of luck with your new job, Abbey!

September, 2020: The Franz Lab welcomes Seth Allen and Akasha Barreto, two new undergraduate researchers!

August 14, 2020: It’s Lizzie Hunsaker‘s last day in the Franz Lab! Lizzie will be starting an ACS/AAAS Congressional Science Fellowship in Washington, DC. Farewell and good luck, Lizzie! You can keep up with Lizzie and her science policy adventures on her Twitter and website.

July 14, 2020: Congrats to Dr. Abbey Jackson (Franz Lab PhD #18), who successfully defended her dissertation virtually!

June 30, 2020: A socially distanced goodbye to our postdoc Anton!

June 15, 2020: Lizzie and Katie have published their paper on the antifungal activity of metal-binding fluconazole analogs in JBIC!

May 2020: Congratulations to the four Franz Lab undergraduate researchers who have graduated as part of Duke Class of 2020! We are so proud of all of your accomplishments and excited to see what you all do next! Way to go Elena, Azim, Jaewon, and Kevin!

April 2020: Kathy has won a Dean’s Diversity Award! This award recognizes how diversity drives excellence in research, teaching, advising, mentoring, and service.

April 17, 2020: Check out Abbey, Jacqueline, and Elena‘s paper on NDM-1 inhibition by prochelator PcephPT in ACS Infectious Diseases!

April 6, 2020: Subha‘s paper on dithiocarbamate prodrugs activated by prostate specific antigen has been published in Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters! Congrats to former group members Subha and Paige (Petpailin)!

March 17, 2020: Check out Anna‘s First Reactions piece in ACS Central Science on ferrichelatase activity of siderophore proteins reported by the Wencewicz group!

February 3, 2020: Welcome Catherine Denning-Jannace, our new postdoc!

January 2020: Undergraduate researcher Azim Dharani has been awarded a Churchill Scholarship! He will pursue a year of graduate study at Cambridge University. Congrats, Azim!

December 2019: The Franz Lab officially welcomes two new graduate students, Katie McAuliffe and Sara Tuck, and a new undergraduate student, Sean Gao!

November 5, 2019: Check out Lizzie‘s latest publication on C. albicans metal handling and drug stress in Metallomics!

October 11, 2019: Congratulations to Dr. Lizzie Hunsaker, Franz lab PhD #17!

October 7, 2019: Jacqueline, Joanna, and Abbey presented at the 5th Annual Duke Chemistry Research Symposium!

September 16, 2019: Congrats to Joanna on passing her prelim! Great job!

September 2019: Abbey presents at the ASM/ESCMID conference on Drug Development to Meet the Challenge of Antimicrobial Resistance.

August 2019: Kathy has received the 2020 ACS Award for Encouraging Women into Careers in the Chemical Sciences!

August 2019: The Franz Lab gains two new members! Tyler is a new postdoc and Logan is a new undergraduate researcher.

August 2019: Kathy, Lizzie, and Joanna attended ICBIC in Interlaken, Switzerland! Kathy gave a plenary talk, Lizzie won a poster award, and Joanna won a conference travel grant, so it was a great week for the Franz Lab! When they weren’t sharing great science, Lizzie and Joanna had some time for adventuring and cow-petting.

August 2, 2019: Elena and Christine presented at the 2019 Duke Chemistry Undergraduate Summer Symposium. Great work this summer!

June 28, 2019: Congrats to Abbey on being awarded a Kathleen Zielik Fellowship from the department of chemistry!

June 25, 2019: Congrats to Dr. Steven Conklin (Franz Lab PhD #16!) on a successful dissertation defense!

June 2019: Read about “Emerging Opportunities To Manipulate Metal Trafficking for Therapeutic Benefit” in Lizzie‘s viewpoint in Inorganic Chemistry!

June 2019: The Franz Lab welcomes three new members! Anna is our new postdoc, Christine is an undergraduate researcher, and Katie is an incoming graduate student who will be working with us this summer. We can’t wait to see what discoveries you all make!

May 14, 2019: The Franz Lab climbs to the top of the Duke Chapel tower as part of a goodbye outing for our postdoc Subha! We’ll all miss Subha so much but wish her the best with her next adventure!

May 2019: Congratulations to undergraduate Max Xu on graduating! Max has done a wonderful job contributing to the Histatin-5 project and will surely do great work at his upcoming NIH post-bac fellowship.

April 2019: A huge congratulations to our undergraduate researcher Azim, who has won a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship!

April 22, 2019: Two of our awesome undergrads presented at the Visible Thinking 2019 Poster Session! Nice job, Elena and Jaewon!

April 2019: Congrats to Elena, who was awarded a Dean’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship! This will allow her to perform research full time for 5 weeks this summer.

April 5, 2019: Jacqueline presented at the Duke Women in Science and Engineering Symposium!

March 31, 2019: Lizzie presented her work at ACS Orlando. Check out Lizzie’s Twitter profile for more details about her trip!

March 28, 2019: There are many cool things you can do as a graduate student. Take those opportunities to make a difference out there! Check out Lizzie advocating for science funding at ASBMB Hill Day. Go Lizzie!

March 13, 2019: Lizzie‘s paper on the complex (but not complex forming!) relationship between copper and azole antifungals is published in Dalton Transactions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 2019: Congratulations to Max for receiving an NIH Postbaccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award! After graduating, he will be joining Dr. Richard Hodes’ lab in the Experimental Immunology Branch of the National Institutes of Aging as a post-bac member.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

February 2019: Congrats to Azim for receiving an AACR Undergraduate Scholarship from the American Association for Cancer Research! This award will give him funding to continue his research and attend the next two national AACR meetings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

February 6, 2019: Read Abbey‘s post on the graduate school professional development blog about the value of internships and her experience at the EPA.

January 2019: Check out the Metals in Medicine thematic issue of Chemical Reviews, co-edited by Kathy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 2018: Jacqueline and Abbey have returned from their internships and passed their proposal exams!!! Now, back to the fight against bacterial infection!

November 5, 2018: Qin‘s work on improving the stability and cytoprotection of aroylhydrazone prochelators is published in Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry.

October 8, 2018: Lizzie and Jacqueline presented at the 4th Annual Duke Chemistry Research Symposium.

September 11, 2018: The Franz Lab hosts Prof. Tim Wencewicz from Washington University in St. Louis.

September 6, 2018: Check out this article on the many ways Duke prepares doctoral students for life beyond academia, featuring Lizzie!

August 15, 2018: Kacey’s rolling out! Armed with a PhD and rolled ice cream, she’s off to new adventures! We’ll miss you Dr. Kacey!

July 27, 2018: It was great hosting Paige from Naresuan University for the summer. She got her compound! We’ll miss you Paige!

July 20, 2018: Congratulations to Dr. Kacey Hall, Franz Lab PhD #15!

July 19, 2018: Subha, Mark, Azim, and collaborators publish their strategy for directing copper dithiocarbamate toxicity against cancer in Angewandte Chemie! This work is also highlighted as top story of the week in Prostate Cell News!

June 28, 2018: Congrats to Jacqueline ⁩and other student poster winners at Metals in Medicine GRC! Thanks RSC!

May 21, 2018: Welcome to the Franz Lab, Petpailin Wiangnak (AKA Paige) from Naresuan University in Thailand! Paige will be doing research with us this summer on molecules that affect biological metal homeostasis.

May 18, 2018: Lizzie presented her work on the interactions between metals and antifungal drugs at the Duke EPIC (Eukaryotic Pathogenesis Investigators Colloquia) Symposium poster session.

May 13, 2018: Congratulations to our two graduating senior undergrads: Matias Horst and Vivian Lu. Matias and Vivian have done awesome work and we can’t wait to see what they do next!

April 27, 2018: Abbey and Lizzie presented posters at the Duke Women in Science and Engineering Symposium.

April 24, 2018: Matias gave his final undergraduate thesis presentation on his work with metallopolymers. Great work, Matias!

April 20, 2018: Seniors Matias and Vivian presented at the department undergraduate poster session.

April 19, 2018: Five Franz Lab undergrads presented their projects at the Visible Thinking poster session.

April 4, 2018: Lizzie gave a fantastic 5-minute talk at Duke GradX about her project: “How does copper control the efficacy of our drugs?”

March 2018: Jacqueline, Abbey, David and our collaborators publish in ACS Infectious Diseases on the role of copper in the antibacterial mechanism of pyrithione and its prochelator!

March 2018: Anton Razgoniaev joins our group as a postdoc to work on a joint metallopolymer project with the Craig Lab. Welcome to the Franz Lab, Anton!

March 2018: Jacqueline and collaborator Kelly utilize the beamline at Argonne National Lab to analyze the copper content of cells via x-ray fluorescence imaging.

March 2018: The Franz Lab has a Twitter account! Follow us here!

January 2018: “Chemical and functional properties of metal chelators that mobilize copper to elicit fungal killing of Cryptococcus neoformans” is one of the 10 most downloaded Metallomics articles of 2017! Congrats Marian, Lizzie, Zeenat, and Bruno!

January 2018: The Franz Lab welcomes a new graduate student, Joanna Campbell!

November 2017: Matias wins the ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry Undergraduate Award in Inorganic Chemistry!

November 2017: Congrats to Lizzie and Steven for passing their prop exams!

October 2017: Kacey, Andy, Rory, Mike, and Vivian publish their work on metal-binding hydrazone photoswitches in Photochemical and Photobiological Sciences.

November 2017: Congrats to Azim for winning a Barthalmus Research Grant to help fund his research and a conference presentation!

October 9, 2017: Kacey, Lizzie, and Jacqueline present posters at the Duke Chemistry Graduate Research Symposium. (Photos from Graduate Chemistry Council)

September 15, 2017: Jacqueline‘s poster wins an award at the Duke Pharmacology and Cancer Biology annual retreat poster session!

August 2017: The Franz Lab goes to Washington, DC for the American Chemical Society national meeting!

August 2017: Lizzie attends a Molecular Mycology course in Woods Hole, MA.

August 2017: Steven‘s paper on copper-dependent activity of histatin peptides is published in Biochemistry.

July 2017: Qin‘s paper on the hydrolytic susceptibility of prochelator BSIH is published in Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters.

May 14, 2017: Congratulations to undergrads Kelley, Spencer, and Mike on their graduation from Duke!

April 21, 2017: Kelley, Spencer, and Mike present at the Chemistry Majors Poster Session.

April 20, 2017: Kelley presents her senior thesis!

April 13, 2017: Kelley and Matias present posters at Visible Thinking: A Presentation of Undergraduate Research.

April 7, 2017: Congratulations to Jacqueline for passing her prelim!

April 6, 2017: Congratulations Dr. Mark Sleeper! Franz Lab PhD #14

April 5, 2017: Congratulations to Abbey for passing her prelim!

March 10, 2017: Congratulations, Dr. Qin Wang! Franz Lab PhD #13

November 2016: Jacqueline collects data (and gets some exercise) during beam time at the synchotron in Chicago!

October 2016: The Franz Lab hosts Prof. Nils Metzler-Nolte!

August 2016: We have enjoyed having Emma Bridgman and Tanvi Dange with us for summer research! Emma is a rising senior at St. Mary’s College (with group alum Kathryn Haas!), and Tanvi is a rising high school senior at The Peddie School (with group alum Sarah (Crider) Venanzi!).

July 2016:  Kathy, Lizzie, Subha and Qin attend the 2016 Metals in Medicine Gordon Research Conference in New Hampshire (co-chaired by Kathy!).  Congrats to Subha and Qin for getting Best Poster awards!

April 2016: Congratulations to Lizzie and Steven for passing their prelims!

March 2016:  Kathy is awarded the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring:

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March 2016:  Abbey wins a prestigious NSF predoctoral fellowship.  Way to go Abbey!!!!

March 24, 2016:  Congratulations Dr. David Besse!  Franz Lab PhD #12

March 2016: Welcome new post-doctoral fellow Dr. Subha Bakthavatsalam!

January 2016: Welcome new graduate students Jacqueline Zaengle and Abbey Jackson!

Dec 2015: Congratulations to Zeenat for defending her Master’s Thesis.  Good luck Zeenat, we will miss you!

May 2015:  Bruno and Jake‘s paper on heterometallic cooperativity by a designed peptide is published in Chemical Science. Check it out.

April/May 2015: Congratulations to Zeenat and Kacey for both passing their prelim exams!

December 2014: Welcome new grad students, Lizzie White and Steven Conklin!

October 2014:  Congratulations Dr. Marian Helsel, PhD!

July 2014:  Marian wins a Best Poster Prize at BioMetals2014.  Good Job!

July 2014: Marian‘s collaborative paper with Ricky Festa (Thiele lab) appears in Chemistry & Biology.  Cheers to that!

Read the News piece Molecule Enhances Copper’s Lethal Punch Against Microbes on the Duke Medicine News website.

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May 2014:  Congratulations Dr. Andrew Franks for completing his PhD.  Way to go Andy — keep Hope alive!

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April 2014: Congratulations to Qiang Su on completing your Master of Science degree.  Good job, Qiang!

April 2014: Kudos go out to Zeenat Razvi for being awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.  Way to go, Zeenat

January 2014:  Welcome first year grad students Kacey Hall and Zeenat Razvi to the Franz Lab. We are thrilled to have you.

September 2013: The Franz lab welcomes new post-doc Bruno Alies to the lab.

August 2012:  Congratulations to Andy Franks for being awarded the Pelham Wilder Fellowship from the department for exceptional work in undergraduate instruction, and to Marian Helsel for the CR Hauser Memorial Fellowship for demonstrating an exceptional aptitude for research.

July 2012: Qin passes her prelim! Way to go Qin.

July 2012: Congratulations Dr. Drew Folk, the latest Franz Lab PhD.

June 2012:

• Congratulations Marian and Andy, who were both selected to give “Poster Slam” presentations at the Metals in Medicine Gordon Conference.
• What is Inorganic Chemistry? Go to the Duke University “Core Concepts in Chemistry” iTunes U course and click on lecture #4 “The Periodic Table and Life” (click on “view in iTunes” to get to the free content).
• More video? Check out the ACS Publications “Why I read” campaign video, featuring Kathy and other chemists describing why they read and publish in ACS journals.

April, 2012:     Samhita and Justin present their independent study projects at the Chemistry Department Poster Session. Nice work!

April 2012: Congratulations to Mark and David for passing their prelim exams! Next stop, PhD . . .

March, 2012: Congratulations to Drew for winning a Best Poster Prize at the ACS National Meeting in San Diego. Drew’s poster, entitled “Visualizing Beta-Sectretase Activity in Cells with a Membrane Anchored FRET Probe” was part of a special symposium on “Chemical Interactions of Metal-Related Therapeutic Drugs”.

January 2012:

• Qiang Su joins the lab as a first-year graduate student!
• Check out Jeff‘s cover art on the Feb 2012 issue of J. Inorg. Biochem.

• Group Alums Jeff and Kat can’t escape the Franz Lab, even when touring in Italy! (October, 2011)

• Marina‘s prochelator paper in J. Inorg. Biochem. has been evaluated by Faculty of 1000.

April 7, 2011: Congratulations Dr. Hyman!!!