Deborah Sementa, Ph.D.

  • Postdoctoral Research Associate, Ulijn Lab, Nanoscience Initiative

Deborah received her Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from University of Naples – Federico II with a thesis on the construction of multifunctional molecular tools with improved efficacy, pharmacokinetic properties and targeted delivery. As part of her Ph.D. studies, she has been a visiting scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working in the field of flow-based peptide/protein synthesis and Chemical Biology. Then, she joined RCSI as a Marie Curie Post-doctoral Research Fellow, where she gained expertise in design and synthesis of new Phase Transfer Catalysts. Her research focuses on the combination of solid-phase and solution-phase methods for the generation of valuable chemical devices.

Publications

F. Sheehan, D. Sementa, A. Jain, M. Kumar, M. Tayarani-Najjaran, D. Kroiss, and R.V. Ulijn, Peptide-Based Supramolecular Systems Chemistry, Chem. Rev., 2021, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemrev.1c00089.

A. Lampel, S.A. McPhee, S. Kassem, D. Sementa, T. Massarano, J. M. Aramini, Y. He, and R. V. Ulijn, Melanin-Inspired Chromophoric Microparticles Composed of Polymeric Peptide Pigments, Angew Chem Int Ed Engl, 2021, 60, 7564-7569.

M. Kumar, J. Son, R.H. Huang, D. Sementa, M. Lee, S. O'Brien, and R.V. Ulijn, In Situ, Noncovalent Labeling and Stimulated Emission Depletion-Based Super-Resolution Imaging of Supramolecular Peptide Nanostructures, ACS Nano, 2020in press.

M. Kumar, D. Sementa, V. Narang, E. Riedo, and R.V. Ulijn, Self-Assembly Propensity Dictates Lifetimes in Transient Naphthalimide-Dipeptide NanofibersChem. Eur J., 2020, 26, 8372-8376.