Marc Anderson

Education

B.S. (1995) University of Colorado at Boulder, Computer Science
Ph.D. (2001) University of California at Santa Cruz, Organic Chemistry

Research Areas: Organic and Medicinal Chemistry

Our group uses organic synthesis as a tool to design and optimize modulators of therapeutically relevant protein targets. Previous targets we have pursued are anion channel proteins, including:  TMEM16A (anoctamin 1), UT-A, CFTR, pendrin, SLC26A3, SLC26A4,  etc.  Typical projects involve multi-step organic synthesis of putative small molecule channel protein modulators.  When amenable, cell-based functional assays are used that investigate potency against the channel protein targets.  As part of this work, frequently develop new synthetic methods for heterocyclic molecules, including coumarins, benzofurans, triazolo-thieno-pyrimidones, etc., and then generate libraries of new molecules that probe structure-activity relationships (SARs).

Current Teaching-Research Workload Issues

SFSU stopped considering supervision of undergrad / grad students as part of faculty workload.  It is now an unpaid (aka volunteer) activity for faculty, whose primary workload now is to teach, coordinate lab courses, maintain equipment, etc.

Due to an unusually high teaching load, and without additional time to serve as a volunteer research advisor,  I have currently stopped accepting undergraduate and graduate research students.  This allows me to focus my workload on effective teaching / teaching lab coordination, which is the basis of my faculty salary.

Another factor in this decision is lack of organic faculty / lecturers to cover our courses. The time / overhead to teach 9 units a semester (as recently established) makes me unable to also maintain a research lab, as a volunteer research advisor.
 

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