Feb 2007
"Omid Khakshoor" an Iranian Jewish student
Omid
Khakshoor was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1976 and received his B.S. and M.S.
degrees in Chemistry from Sharif University of Technology, the top university in
Iran.
In 2002, he immigrated to the United States to pursue a Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine (UCI); in 2005, he was awarded US permanent residency.
Omid is currently a third-year graduate student in the research group of Professor James S. Nowick. For his doctoral studies, he has developed novel macrocyclic peptides that self-assemble in water through edge-to-edge and face-to-face β-sheet interactions. He has also invented a new internal standard for NMR spectroscopic studies of cationic peptides and synthesized a new isotopically labeled derivatizing agent for NMR studies of sugars.
He is currently studying the interactions between β-sheet proteins and his macrocyclic peptides, with the goal of controlling the β-sheet interactions between proteins.
In addition to the ACS MEDI student fellowship, Omid has received the 1993 and 1998 Iranian Chemistry Olympiad gold medals, the 2005 UCI Medal Fellowship, and the 2006 Allergan Graduate Fellowship, and the 2006 UCI E. K. C. Lee Award. After he completes his doctoral and postdoctoral studies, Omid hopes to pursue a career in academia and lead a distinguished research program.
