MIKIW 2026: In Review

We were thrilled to send a delegation again this year to MIKIW 2026, the annual medicinal chemistry focused meeting-in-miniature shared between the University of Minnesota, University of Illinois - Chicago, University of Kansas, University of Iowa, and University of Wisconsin. The University of Iowa hosted the meeting this year.

Over 160 students, post-docs, and faculty attended the meeting in total. There were 14 student talks from across the five universities, a plenary presentation by Prof. Christopher McCurdy from the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, and many poster presentations. Our folks had a wonderful time and learned a lot.

UMN Medicinal Chemistry was well-represented!

We had around 30 students give poster presentations throughout the weekend, and Jake Schmitt (Georg Lab) won a poster award! 

The following three UMN students gave oral presentations:

Kelsey Holdaway (Georg Lab) - Development of Covalent-Allosteric Inhibitors of Cyclin-Dependent Kinase 2

Julia Lee (Duerfeldt Lab) - Design, Synthesis, And Evaluation of Small Molecule Leads for Diabetic Retinopathy

Laura Hirsch (Harki Lab) - Development of Highly Potent and Selective Dual Degraders of Aurora Kinase A and N-Myc for Neuroblastoma Therapy

Thank you to all the students, faculty, and other participants from our department and around the Midwest who came together to share their knowledge with each other.

Staff members Arturo Hernández and Kristen St Michel worked on planning and logistics, and Director of Graduate Studies Professor Daniel Harki provided oversight. We send our gratitude to these three for their hard work!

You can read more about MIKIW 2026 here.