Sophie Cemaj , B.Sc.

Research Interests

Sophie Cemaj graduated from Emory University in 2017 with a B. Sc. In Chemistry and a Hebrew minor. Her undergraduate research career began under the guidance of Dr. Cora MacBeth through the Center of Carbon Hydrogen Functionalization’s (CCHF) summer internship at Emory University. Her work in the MacBeth inorganic chemistry lab revolved around the synthesis and characterization of first-row transition-metal catalyst capable of oxidizing alcohols into ketones and aldehydes (2015-2017). She was later selected as an undergraduate summer fellow and invited to work in Dr. Kenichiro Itami’s lab at the Institute of Transformative bioMolecules at Nagoya University, in Nagoya, Japan (2016). She worked on the  synthesis of small molecules capable of increasing stomatal numbers in plants.

Sophie joined the Medicinal Chemistry Section of the Molecular Targets and Medications Discovery Branch as a post-baccalaureate IRTA Fellow and is a recipient of the Scientific Director’s Diversity in Research Fellowship,  in the laboratory of Dr. Amy H. Newman in 2017. She works on the discovery of compounds that selectively target the D2 like receptor family. Her work involves synthesizing and identifying lead compounds by evaluating their binding affinities using radioligand displacement assays. These compounds are being developed as potential therapeutics for the treatment of substance use disorders.