Dr. Sean Kerwin

From a young age, Sean Kerwin had a sense that chemistry was his calling, though the specific details of how he would use that calling would be shaped by further education.

"I knew that I wanted to become a medicinal chemist someday and focus not just on the interface between chemistry and biology, but also on the application of computers to designing molecules," he says.

Kerwin’s father was head of medicinal chemistry at a pharmaceutical company in his hometown of Philadelphia, and advised Kerwin to “first learn how to make molecules, and then branch out into computational chemistry.”

At his undergraduate alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, Kerwin was introduced to bio-organic chemistry. Fascinated by the subject, Kerwin obtained his PhD in medicinal chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, researching pure organic synthesis for his PhD project.

“What distinguishes medicinal chemists from regular chemists is that we have in our minds a picture of the path from what we’re doing to an eventual drug,” he says. “We work in the very basic beginnings of drug discovery.”

During the 15 years Kerwin has taught at UT, some of his research teams have had their technologies patented and used by pharmaceutical companies, laying the foundation for potential drug development. “One of the most compelling aspects of research for me is that every molecule you make is rife with possibilities,” he says. “There’s always this glimmer of hope that this could be the one-in-ten-thousand compound that leads to a new drug.”

Those hoping to study and research under Kerwin can expect to learn how to think of visual topics in a very chemical, analytical sense as well as experience great diversity of what is learned in the laboratory. Kerwin says his former students most value learning “a lot about a lot of different things” in his lab. The interdisciplinary focus involves collaboration not only with other UT science departments, but also with programs such as the Center for Research on Environmental Diseases at Science Park.

My graduate students are scientifically very diverse, Kerwin says. “Learning to understand each other’s science languages is one of the hallmarks of my group . We not only speak different languages, but think differently about problems.”

Kerwin believes this diversity is a strength because “everybody brings something different to the table.”

One of Kerwin’s roles is to identify promising students early in their professional pharmacy education and invite them to consider research as a career. If they’re interested in doing so, Kerwin works with them in seminar format, using formal and informal classes and labs to merge students’ professional pharmacy training with a PhD.

“I’m just amazed at the caliber and maturity of the students we have,” he says. “It’s been really rewarding for me to watch this incredibly motivated group that can tackle the difficult, challenging pharmacy curriculum and at the same time carry on research and take graduate courses toward their PhD.”

One of Kerwin’s goals as a professor is to add more people to the world that are enthusiastic about science. “Chemistry is fundamentally interesting,” he says. “In the past few years we’ve discovered chemistry that has no clear application to drug discovery or development, yet is mind-boggling and has kept us on our toes.”