Professor Zhaohui Zhou (pronounced like Joe), a.k.a. Sunny, received his B.S. in chemistry in 1990 from the Department of Chemistry at Peking University, Beijing, China.  He then worked for a year on natural products at the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Materia Medica, Changchun, Jilin, China.  In 1997, he received his Ph.D. in bioorganic chemistry from the Scripps Research Institute under Professor Donald Hilvert in the Departments of Chemistry and Molecular Biology.  He did postdoctoral research with Professor Rowena G. Matthews in the Biophysics Research Division and Department of Biological Chemistry at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.  From 2000, he is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Washington State University, and also holds appointments at the School of Molecular Biosciences, the Graduate Program of Pharmacology and Toxicology, and the NIH Biotechnology Training Program on Protein Chemistry

Joshua Alfaro received his B.S. degree in chemistry from Washington State University in 1997. Joshua then went on to work at the United States Department of Agriculture for nearly four years formulating insect attractants. He returned to Washington State University as an organic chemistry graduate student in the fall of 2001 and joined Professor Zhou’s lab spring 2002. Recently, he was awarded the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on his work on protein post-translational modifications.

Kathy Dorgan received her B.S. in genetics and cell biology in 2004 from Washington State University, Pullman, Washington. Currently, she is studying the bacterial enzymes S-adenosylhomocysteine nucleosidase and LuxS, as well as earning her pilot's license.

Visiting scholar in Department of Chemistry 2005 - 2007
Associate Professor of Traditional Chinese Medicine
College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Xinjiang Medical University, China

Bracken Armstrong is an undergraduate majoring in Biochemistry/Molecular Biology (Pre-Med). In 2005, he was a recipient of the Center for Integrated Biotechnology Undergraduate Fellowship for research and has been working in Sunny Zhou's lab ever since. A member of Air Force ROTC, he also TAs for organic chemistry and volunteers at the local hospital emergency department. Currently, he is studying protein modification and oxidation by way of mass spectroscopy.

Stephanie Petersen is currently working on her undergraduate degree in biology at Washington State University, Pullman, Washington. She is a new member to the team.

Graduate student He Sun received her BS in the College of Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology in 2005 from Tianjin University in China. Her interest focuses on enzymology.

Yuzhuo Chu received her B.S. degree in Biotechnology in 2005 from Jilin University, China. She then joined the Department of Chemistry in Washington State University in Fall 2005 as a graduate student.

Ritu Bhalla received her Ph.D. in Biotechnology from Department of Zoology, University of Delhi in 2003. She is presently characterizing the LuxS pathway using a biochemical approach and designing biological assays for studying the activity of LuxS enzyme.

Chun Li graduated from University of Idaho. Her previous research topic was design and synthesis of anticancer candidates. Currently, she is working as a post-doc researcher on the synthesis of enzyme inhibitors.

Dr. Sina Odejinmi received his B.Sc in Industrial Chemistry from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1998. He joined the Wiemer research group, Chemistry Department at the University of Iowa in fall 2000 and earned a Ph.D in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of Iowa in July, 2005. He joined our group this fall as a postdoctoral fellow and his research is currently based on the preparation of LuxS inhibitors.

Noah Holt is a chemistry undergraduate at Washington State University. He began working in Sunnyland in May 2005, working under a minigrant provided by the Washington State University College of Sciences. Currently he is investigating a better method of detecting carboxylic esters in biological media.

Mohamed Nuur is a Computer Science undergraduate at Washington State University. Currently, Mohamed is working on the web site and database development for SunnyLand.

Anzor Balkar is an undergraduate Computer Science student at Washington State University and is currently working on graphic, logo, and web design for SunnyLand.