Nicola Lucia B. Pohl is an American chemist who is the Joan & Marvin Carmack Chair at

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, or simply Indiana) is a public university, public research university in Bloomington, Indiana. It is the flagship university, flagship campus of Indiana University and, with ...

. She also serves as Associate Dean of Natural and Mathematical Sciences. Her research considers new approaches to make and analyse sugars. In 2020 she was elected a Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

Early life and education

Pohl earned her master's degree in at

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

. She graduated in 1991 having majored in English and American literature. Her graduate dissertation considered the works of Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy. After completing her master's, Pohl started a doctoral research programme in chemistry at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an educational institution, institution of higher education, higher (or Tertiary education, tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. Universities ty ...

. She has said that she was inspired by her Harvard chemistry professor,

Dudley R. Herschbach Dudley Robert Herschbach (born June 18, 1932) is an American chemist at Harvard University. He won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with Yuan T. Lee and John C. Polanyi "for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elemen ...

. Her doctoral research involved the synthesis of

carbohydrate In organic chemistry, a carbohydrate () is a biomolecule consisting of carbon (C), hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) atoms, usually with a hydrogen–oxygen atom ratio of 2:1 (as in water) and thus with the empirical formula (where ''m'' may or ma ...

-based ligands under the supervision of Laura L. Kiessling. She joined

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

as a

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

postdoctoral fellow in the research group of

Chaitan Khosla Chaitan Khosla is an Indian biochemist who is the Wells H. Rauser and Harold M. Petiprin Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry at Stanford University. He earned his B.Tech. in chemical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology B ...

Research and career

In 2000 Pohl joined the faculty at

Iowa State University Iowa State University of Science and Technology (Iowa State University, Iowa State, or ISU) is a public land-grant research university in Ames, Iowa. Founded in 1858 as the Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm, Iowa State became one of the n ...

. She spent twelve years in Iowa, eventually being made Wilkinson Professor of Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering. In 2008 she founded LuCELLa Biosciences, a spin-out company who specialise in the custom synthesis of carbohydrates. Pohl joined Indiana University Bloomington in 2012, where she was made the Professor and Joan & Marvin Carmack Chair. Pohl is interested in the synthesis and characterisation of sugars in an effort to better understand their role in biological function. By better understanding the interactions of carbohydrates, Pohl believes that she will be able to rationally design vaccinations and other therapies. She demonstrated an oligosaccharide synthesis process that involved automated solution-phase methods. The automation process involves the use of

fluorocarbon Fluorocarbons are chemical compounds with carbon-fluorine bonds. Compounds that contain many C-F bonds often has distinctive properties, e.g., enhanced stability, volatility, and hydrophobicity. Fluorocarbons and their derivatives are commerci ...

tags that can be used to pattern the surfaces of tagged molecules to form carbohydrate microarrays. Pohl spent 2019 as a

Fulbright Program The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

scholar at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna.

Awards and honours

* 2004 National Science Foundation CAREER Award * 2010

American Chemical Society The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all d ...

Horace S. Isbell Award * 2017 Elected Edward, Frances, and Shirley B. Daniels Fellow at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

* 2017 International Fluorous Technology Award * 2017

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

Chemist Harry and Carol Mosher Award * 2018 American Chemical Society Melville L. Wolfram Award * 2019

Scholar * 2020 Elected a Fellow of the

Selected publications

* * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pohl, Nicola Iowa State University faculty Indiana University Bloomington faculty University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni Radcliffe College alumni Year of birth missing (living people) Living people