Kevin Burgess is Rachal Professor of Organic Chemistry at Texas A&M University. His research interests focus on synthesis and synthetic methodology to tackle problems of relevance to medicinal chemistry and biotechnology. Currently, active projects in his research group include:
• syntheses, mediated by organometallic catalysts, of privileged chirons found in natural products;
• syntheses of dipeptide mimics of secondary structures found at hot-spots in protein-protein interactions;
• construction of combinatorial
libraries of molecules designed to disrupt or mimic protein-protein
interactions; and,
• syntheses of fluorescent through-bond-energy-transfer cassettes to facilitate observation of protein-protein interactions in cells.