Overview
As the James A. Perkins endowed Professor and Research Scientist at Cornell, I have devoted my professional life to the chemical biology. ecology and medicinal chemistry and toxicology of natural small molecules and glycoproteins from plants and arthropods that are important in ecological and biological interactions and human and animal health and medicine. In collaboration with Dr. Richard Wrangham at Harvard we established the discipline of zoopharmacognosy (animal self medication with plants) and Chemo-ornithology (chemical ecology of bird-inect-plant interactions) with David Rosane from CUNY. I have developed a new undergraduate course and research program on the pharmacognosy, pharmacology and nutritional biochemistry of natural substance important for the control of diabetes type 2 and breast and pancreatic cancer in underrepresented communities in the US and Mexico. I have also devoted considerable time and effort to the training of hundreds of underrepresented undergraduate and graduate minority and majority students in the sciences at Cornell and the University of California, Irvine. A plethora of these fine young women and men at Cornell and UCI are now medical doctors, health specialists, research Professors, pharmaceutical scientists, biologists and environmental ecologists.
