Research Overview

Professor Reed's research interests include synthesis, nanoscience, pharmacogenomics, and green chemistry.

Ongoing Projects:

Our pharmacogenomics research focuses on efforts to utilize computational chemistry, genomic databases, and artificial Intelligence to predict what genetic patterns cause some people to be harmed by the drugs that are meant to help them. This project, Identifying Genetic Contributions to Adverse Drug Reactions, is currently funded by NIGMS.

The NIBIB funded Rocky Mountain Summer Research Education Experience is a paid professional development opportunity for highly-committed, ambitious high school teachers looking to expand their skills as a STEM teacher. The program provides an intensive, independent research experience for Front Range high school STEM teachers in the fields of bioengineering, bioimaging, and health informatics. Learn about RMSREE

Chemicals known as photocleavable protecting groups (PPGs) have utility in medicine as drug releasing agents and in material science for the design of patterned surfaces. We have discovered a category of PPGs that are unusually precise in that the three-dimensional arrangement of the molecule determines whether it reacts with light and whether it reacts with circularly polarized light produced by passing light through a polarizer and a birefringent material. This researchl has importance to the field of drug design and could also play a role in explaining how life evolved on Earth.