This event is organized by U of T's Acceleration Consortium.
Note: Event details can change. Please visit the unit’s website for the latest information about this event.
Date: November 18, 2025
Speaker: Tim Cernak
Time: 10-11 a.m. ET
Location: Hybrid
Virtual: Zoom
In-person: 700 University Avenue, 10th floor seminar room
Join Tim Cernak to learn about how data science, automation, and novel amine-acid cross coupling reactions are transforming chemical synthesis, drug discovery, and biodiversity conservation.
Talk title:
Combinatorial explosion: from atom-bond arrangements to exotic diseases
Abstract:
Chemical synthesis and data science are two fields that operate in synergy. Molecules and the routes to synthesize them are easily represented as graphs while automated chemical synthesis strategies allow more and more synthesis data to be captured, for instance to feed machine learning algorithms. This talk will detail our work in this area focused on a new class of amine-acid cross coupling reactions, and the computer-assisted synthesis of drugs and natural products. Through automation we often unite synthesis and biological profiling in a direct-to-biology strategy. We have been exploring the breadth of all reactions that could exist, navigating combinatorial explosions of virtual and plausible reaction methods, routes to complex molecules, and the interconnectedness of reaction conditions, transformations, and biological functions. Our view of reactions and their mechanisms and accelerated drug discovery has recently extended to wildlife diseases, with a focus on biodiversity conservation and One Health.
Bio:
Tim Cernak is an Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Michigan. He holds appointments in the University of Michigan Department of Chemistry, the Program in Chemical Biology, the Center for Global Health Equity, the Michigan Institute for Data Science, and the Michigan Center for Infectious Disease Threats. Tim’s research interests include chemical synthesis, catalysis, total synthesis, chemoinformatics, data science, automation, natural products, medicinal chemistry, agrichemistry, sustainability, cell imaging, mass spectrometry, ecology, conservation, robotics and drug discovery. Prior to joining the University of Michigan in 2018, Tim worked for 9 years at Merck Research Laboratories in Rahway, NJ and Boston, MA where he focused on C–H functionalization, reaction miniaturization, and drug design for oncology, neurological and metabolic diseases. Tim performed undergraduate studies at UBC Okanagan, was an FQRNT Pre-doctoral Fellow at McGill University in the labs of Prof. Jim Gleason, and an FQRNT Post-doctoral Fellow at Columbia University with Prof. Tristan Lambert. Tim has served on the Advisory Board of The University of Dundee’s Drug Discovery Unit, The Open Reaction Database and Scorpion Therapeutics. He is a co-founder of Iambic Therapeutics.