Dr. Shaikh earned his Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts Boston under the supervision of Dr. Bela Torok where he worked on synthesis of chiral organofluorine compounds as potential therapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease. After his graduation in 2007, he accepted a postdoctoral fellow position with Dr. Xudong Huang at the Harvard Medical School, and worked on development of novel MRI-contrast and PET-imaging agents for early diagnosis of cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. He then joined Dr. Frank Schroeder’s lab at Cornell University to conduct postdoctoral research in the area of natural product synthesis before joining the faculty at Georgia Southern University in Fall 2010.

Research Interests: Synthesis of biologically active synthetic and natural products, design and synthesis of novel MRI contrast agents and PET imaging agents, enantioselective organocatalytic synthesis of organofluorine compounds as novel therapeutics in Alzheimer’s disease, and novel green methods for synthesis of biologically important heterocycles.