Research in my group explores the interactions of chemical entities with biological systems and seeks to understand the ensuing effects. Rigorous benchtop techniques are complemented by the power of computational tools to decipher hitherto hidden phenomena. There are 3 main areas of interest:

Bioactive Molecules

Chemicals such as natural products, peptides, essential oils and/or small molecules are either isolated from natural sources (terrestrial and marine) or designed and synthesized, then evaluated for biological activity.

Biomolecular Computations

Molecular docking and molecular dynamics tools are used to unravel potential modes of action of bioactive compounds, predict preferred binding targets and explore events that mediate biomolecule-ligand interaction over a specified time period.

Environmental Monitoring

Our strategy involves constant monitoring of environmental concentrations of pharmaceutical residues and heavy metals, risk evaluation and the development of robust models to predict future environmental levels and effects; and remediation strategies.