Profile

Stefan France

Associate Professor

Education:

B.S. Chemistry, Duke University, 2000; M.A. Chemistry, Johns Hopkins University, 2003; Ph.D. Chemistry, Johns Hopkins University, 2005

Awards:

2015 Senior Faculty Outstanding Undergraduate Mentor Award (Georgia Tech); 2014 CETL Hesberg Award for Teaching Fellow (Georgia Tech); 2014 CETL Faculty Award for Academic Outreach (Georgia Tech); 2013 Sigma Xi Young Faculty Award (Georgia Tech); 2012 NOBCChE Lloyd N. Ferguson Young Scientist Award; 2012 Blanchard Assistant Professorship (Georgia Tech School of Chemistry and Biochemistry);2011 NSF CAREER Award; 2009 ORAU Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award; 2009 Georgia Tech Thank A Teacher Program Award; 2008 Georgia Tech Thank A Teacher Program Award; 2008 Carl Storm... (read more)

Research Interests:

Method Development. Our group is interested in the design of efficient methodologies to accomplish the formation of carbon-carbon and carbon-heteroatom bonds with the intent to apply the methodology toward the synthesis of complex natural and unnatural targets.

Natural Product Synthesis. Approaches to natural products not only inspire the development of new synthetic strategies, but often unveil unexpected and often interesting reactivity. Targets are chosen for their interesting biological activity along with their sheer complexity. We are interested in exploring both modular and convergent approaches to complex targets that enable facile derivatization for the development of combinatorial libraries.

Medicinal Chemistry. Medicinal or pharmaceutical chemistry lies at the intersection of chemistry and pharmacy. Our group is interested in the design, synthesis and development of pharmaceutical drugs, or other chemical entities suitable for therapeutic use. We are further interested in the study of their biological properties and their quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSAR). Given that medicinal chemistry is a highly interdisciplinary science, we aim to establish several collaborations with biologists, biochemists, and computational chemists to facilitate the design and development process. In particular, we aim to develop therapeutics toward the treatment of various forms of cancer, HIV, diabetes, and neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.