The American Chemical Society, in its Select Virtual Issue, featured the research of 17 emerging investigators in the field of bioinorganic chemistry, including UGA associate professor of chemistry Todd Harrop. The feature highlighted the group of early career researchers who have received their Ph.D. since 2004. Born and raised in San Francisco, CA Harrop was a chemistry/biology split major at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, CA where he did undergraduate research with Steve Bachofer. After a difficult junior year battling cancer, he became fascinated with bioinorganic chemistry – two of his chemotherapy drugs (cisplatin and bleomycin) contained active metal centers. This interest led him to the University of California – Santa Cruz where he received his Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry in 2004 with Pradip Mascharak and was an NIH-MBRS graduate research fellow. His formal training ended with an NIH-NRSA postdoctoral fellowship at MIT with one of the fathers of bioinorganic chemistry, Steve Lippard. “It is humbling to be selected as one of the emerging investigators in bioinorganic chemistry especially being one of the few synthetic chemists in the batch,” Harrop said. “The ACS chose work published in high impact journals that cover chemical biology to neuroscience and inorganic chemistry and I am honored to be in their company. This award also recognizes the hard work and effort that my graduate students do and give, respectively, on a daily basis. I especially thank and share this honor with them.” Since 2007, Todd has been at UGA Center for Metalloenzyme Studies in the department of chemistry. His research group is focused on the synthesis and properties of low molecular weight model complexes of metalloenzyme sites that are responsible for the breakdown/transformation of reactive oxygen (superoxide dismutases) and nitrogen species (nitrite reductases), which has been supported by the National Science Foundation.
