Amanuel Kibrom is pursuing a BS degree in the biological sciences at the University of Chicago. He has conducted research at the Indiana University School of Medicine for three years prior to his position as a research assistant with the Tirrell lab. He has done work with testing different methods of cancer treatment with a novel multi-prong approach. With a strong background in cell biology, he provides a unique perspective to the work done in this group. He has been working in the laboratory since January 2013.
Amanuel currently conducts research on a variety of topics working with postdoctoral fellow Sarah Perry. He studies with complex coacervate formation and collaborates with others to observe the tendency of these coacervates to form at various salt concentrations. He works specifically on establishing a more effective pKa determination method for large peptides. Amanuel is pioneering this research group's production of peptoids as they believe this class of molecules may be very effective for the formation of coacervates and coacervate-core micelles for use in cancer or immunotherapy applications, or even a peptidomimetic drug delivery system.