Meeting the power of chemistry

When 17-year-old Hendryck A. Gellineau applied to Cornell in 2014, he believed that having a strong understanding of biology would prepare him for medical school. Gellineau is one of the students featured in this Cornell Research story. He was also interested in drug development research and didn’t know what would help prepare him for it. That all changed during his freshman year at Cornell when he received the opportunity to work in Justin Wilson’s bioinorganic medicinal chemistry lab. Wilson is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology. Now, four years later, Gellineau realizes that to be as skilled a physician and researcher as he hopes to be when he graduates from Cornell, he must explore the connections between the human condition, biology and chemistry.

“I want to practice medicine, absolutely. I want that human interaction to solve the problems of individuals, to alleviate suffering in my community; but my arms only extend so far. There are a lot of other problems in medicine that we have yet to solve. And here I am, doing all this work for Professor Wilson, and I’m seeing the power of what chemistry can do.”

Continue reading the full article on the Cornell Research website.