Two postdoctoral researchers in the Department of Chemistry have been awarded the 2025 Anuj Khandelwal Memorial Travel Award: Dr. Chieh-Kai Chan, a postdoctoral researcher in Martin D. Burke’s group, and Dr. Josseline Ramos Figueroa, a postdoctoral researcher in Wilfred van der Donk’s group.
The Anuj Khandelwal Memorial Fund was established in 2019 in memory of Anuj Khandelwal, who was a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of chemistry Prof. Martin Burke from 2016 until Khandelwal's tragic passing in 2017. Created by his friends and family, the fund supports the Anuj Khandelwal Memorial Travel Award, which provides conference travel funding for postdoctoral researchers in the Department of Chemistry.
Dr. Chieh-Kai Chan
Dr. Chan has been a postdoctoral researcher in the Burke group for two years, leading research projects that involve automation and exploring the chemistry that machines can do as part of the Molecule Maker Lab Institute, an interdisciplinary initiative with leaders in AI and organic synthesis intensively collaborating to create frontier AI tools, dynamic open access databases, and fast and broadly accessible small molecule manufacturing and discovery platforms.
He will use the travel award to present research on the automated repetitive carbon-oxygen and carbon-carbon bonds formation.
Dr. Chan earned a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Medicinal and Applied Chemistry from Kaohsiung Medical University in Taiwan where he was doing synthetic chemistry focusing on small molecule chemistry. He went on to do research in carbohydrate chemistry as an Academia Sinica Postdoctoral Fellow in Taiwan before joining the Burke group at Illinois.
“Now, I am learning some chemical engineering and automation interface and will be using this knowledge and technique to link the automated chemistry,” said Dr. Chan, who wanted to come to Illinois, because he realized in his postdoc work at Academia Sinica how much time chemists spend on the preparation of small molecule building blocks synthesis.
“If we could develop machine-friendly chemistry, it will make the research development faster and more efficient,” said Dr. Chan, whose goal is an academic research career.
“Since I started my PhD journey, I realized academia is my primary interest,” he said, adding that it provides many opportunities to explore new scientific knowledge and solve challenging scientific problems. “Moreover, I like to collaborate with scientists from different background so I can learn knowledge from different fields, facile techniques, and new ways of thinking.”
Most importantly, Dr. Chan said, is that he likes teaching and training students and working with them to solve scientific problems together to develop machine-friendly chemistry and help move science forward.
“I am really grateful that Marty gave me this opportunity to work with him, group members and collaborators,” Chan said. “I had a lot of fun in this scientific journey in the Burke group, and I hope I could deliver his fantastic spirit on research to my group members in my own research center someday.”
Dr. Josseline Ramos Figueroa
Dr. Ramos Figueroa has been a postdoc in the van der Donk lab for more than three years, working on her own research project, and coordinating other group jobs including overseeing the use and maintenance of some HPLC instruments and training new users. She said she will use the award for traveling to a conference to present research that involved uncovering the biosynthetic machinery of a marine bacteria to make ammosamide, a natural product with anticancer properties.
Dr. Ramos Figueroa said she loves learning and doing research in the lab and came to Illinois for a postdoctoral experience, because she saw a great opportunity to learn molecular biology, peptide biocatalysis, and natural product biosynthesis and work at the forefront of these fields.
“During my Ph.D. program, I worked with enzymes that use small molecules as substrates,” said Dr. Ramos Figueroa, who earned a B.S. in chemistry from the Universidad Nacional de Ingenieria in Lima, Peru, and a doctoral degree in chemistry from the University of Saskatchewan. “In the van der Donk lab, I learned a lot about enzymes that use peptides or ‘small proteins’ as substrates, which I find really interesting.”
In the future, she hopes to continue applying her knowledge and enthusiasm about science and enzymes either in an industrial or academic setting. She said she is very thankful to Prof. van der Donk and his group members for the welcoming environment.
“It has been really great,” she said, adding that she really enjoyed interacting with staff at all levels, including the chem and bio storerooms, the NMR, MS, proteomics, and IGB core facilities, and the Organic and Chemistry Biology office. “I also had the chance to mentor two undergraduate students, with whom I shared my passion for science.”