Reflecting on MIKIW 2025

Each year, our department participates in MIKIW, a 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. This year was the 62^nd annual MIKIW, held on the KU campus in Lawrence, KS.

The meeting consisted of 13 student talks from across the five universities, a plenary presentation by Prof. Matt Disney from Scripps / University of Central Florida, and seventy poster presentations. 156 students, post-docs and faculty were in attendance.

UMN Medicinal Chemistry was well-represented and we’re proud to announce the following achievements at the MIKIW meeting:

• Mckenzie Wyllie (Harki Lab) won one of the three oral presentation awards for her talk entitled The Impact of Sugar Conformation on the Single-stranded DNA Selectivity of APOBEC3a and APOBECB Enzymes
• We swept all three poster awards with Farzana Kabir (Harki Lab), Cole Friederichs (Duerfeldt Lab) and Stefan Groß (Georg Lab) taking one each
• Yutong Lui (Georg Lab) and Abhishek Kulkarni (Wagner Lab) also gave excellent oral presentations on behalf of UMN’s delegation

The meeting had a bittersweet component as we remembered the life of KU Professor and longtime MIKIW participant Prof. Robert Hanzlik, who unfortunately passed away recently. He will be remembered as a fantastic medicinal chemistry scientist, mentor, and teacher.

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. 

Our department extends a special thank you to staff members Arturo Hernández and Kristen St Michel for their hard work with logistics, and to Medicinal Chemistry Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Prof. Daniel Harki for his oversight and enthusiasm!

We look forward to MIKIW every year – and here’s to waiting for MIKIW 2026 in Iowa!

You can read more about MIKIW 2025 here.