Four women who recently earned their doctoral degrees from the UVM Department of Chemistry are making a difference in college classrooms, research institutions, and start-up companies in Vermont, New England, and abroad.  

About eight students per year receive a Ph.D. from UVM Chemistry. Among them are Sarah Cleary, Magenta Hensinger, Mona Sharafi, and Emma Ste. Marie, who all completed the doctoral program in the past three years.

Sarah Cleary, UVM ’18

Sarah Cleary, Ph.D., is co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at HydRegen Limited in Oxfordshire, England. The company’s mission is to make chemical manufacturing cleaner, safer, and more efficient through its biocatalytic hydrogenation technology.

Cleary grew up in Burlington, studied at Bates College, and earned her bachelor’s degree in biological chemistry. Before joining UVM’s doctoral program, she interned at Burlington-based Seventh Generation.

At UVM, she worked with Professor Matthias Brewer’s research group, using organic chemistry to synthesize biologically relevant chemicals and to discover and develop new chemical reactions.

“I grew up with ideals that environmentally friendly practices done by individuals are important, such as recycling and reducing electricity use,” Cleary says. “But as the climate crisis has become more emergent, it’s become clear that transforming business practices to be sustainable will make an even more significant impact on reversing climate change.”

Upon completing her Ph.D., Cleary went on to work as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Oxford, where she connected with Dr. Holly Reeve and Professor Kylie Vincent to develop hydrogenation biotechnology geared toward sustainable chemical synthesis.

“We used enzymes instead of toxic metals to harness hydrogen gas as a clean energy source. This technology can be used to produce chemicals that include pharmaceuticals, flavors, fragrances, and agricultural chemicals,” she says.

In 2020, Dr. Cleary, Dr. Reeve and Professor Vincent teamed up to create HydRegen Limited, where Cleary oversees research and development.

“I’m most inspired by the long-term goal and mission of HydRegen, to make chemical manufacturing greener,” Cleary says. “On a day-to-day basis, my job as CSO allows me to be hands-on in the lab, as well as be interactive with lab staff and potential customers. This combination is ideal for me and keeps things dynamic.”

Emma Ste. Marie, UVM ’20

Emma Ste. Marie, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of chemistry at Norwich University, where she teaches organic chemistry and lab. In the upcoming spring semester, her course will focus primarily on green chemistry and making biodiesels.

Ste. Marie’s research at Norwich aims to develop and use chemical tools to solve biological problems. She is particularly interested in peptides equipped with non-natural amino acids that have unique biological activities.

At UVM, Ste. Marie worked with Associate Professor Robert J. Hondal on researching the role of sulfur and selenium in peptides and proteins. Her dissertation focused on how selenium can resist oxidative and electrophilic stress. 

“We encounter oxidative and electrophilic stress every day, and it contributes to many diseases like cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and aging,” she says. “The proteins and peptides that we study—which normally contain selenium—are essential for fighting against these illnesses.”

Ste. Marie earned her undergraduate degree in chemistry from Emmanuel College before returning to her home state and enrolling in UVM’s doctoral program. 

Teaching at Norwich allows her to help make chemistry accessible to all students. 

“I remember struggling with chemistry in high school, and it was very challenging for me to learn it. Then it just clicked, and I found that it was a beautiful subject that can explain so much in our world,” she says. “Chemistry is involved in everything—manufacturing cosmetics, designing new drugs and vaccines, the gas we put in our car, the dye in our clothing. We have to understand chemistry to understand the world.” 

Magenta Hensinger, UVM ’21

Magenta Hensinger, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral research fellow at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in München, Germany. Her work involves quantifying the reactivity of nucleophilic enamines and electrophilic iminium ions derived from imidazolidine-4-thione organocatalysts.

Hensinger earned her undergraduate degree from Millersville University in Pennsylvania before joining the UVM Chemistry Ph.D. program. 

At UVM, she studied a specific type of reaction accessing vinyl cations in Professor Matthias Brewer’s research group. The research, she explained, is useful for synthesizing natural products in the lab that have the potential to be used in drugs. 

In Germany, she works in AK Ofial’s lab in collaboration with the Trapp group on organocatalysts, which are compounds made of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, and non-metal elements. (Watch her video on Twitter about organocatalysts and kinetic chemistry.) 

“Organocatalysts are really important as two researchers focusing on organocatalysts won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry,” says Hensinger, who was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions and will continue her research in Germany until at least April 2023.

“My goal is two-fold: to help the Trapp group so they can have a better understanding of how the imidazolidine-4-thiones react, and to provide a basis for modern organic reactions,” she says. “There are many organocatalysts out there. But the ones I am investigating have not been used as much, and that’s potentially because they’re not well understood.”

Mona Sharafi, UVM ’19

Mona Sharafi, Ph.D. is an NIH T32 Post-Doctoral Fellow at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School in Boston. She works in a lab managed by Dr. Sara Buhrlage and assists in developing highly potent and selective ubiquitin specific protease inhibitors by a combined synthetic and computational approach. 

Sharafi earned her master’s degree from Sharif University of Technology, one of the top universities in Iran, before joining UVM’s doctoral program. 

While working with UVM Associate Professor Severin T. Schneebeli, her research and dissertation focused on how finding sustainable ways to create complex, sequence-defined polymers is essential for future advances in the fields of medicine, electronics, and energy.

She was awarded a couple of prestigious awards at UVM, including the UVM Graduate Best Dissertation Award and the UVM Graduate Research Award from the Department of Chemistry, as well as the Edith Hendley Award from the UVM Women’s Center for her performance in research and teaching. She also has authorship on more than 13 publications, many of them in top peer-reviewed journals in chemistry.

After working as a post-doctoral scientist at UVM, Sharafi headed to Boston in 2021 as a research fellow at Dana-Farber and became a NIH T32 Postdoctoral Fellow to continue her research in chemical biology and cancer treatment.  

“One of biggest advantages for me here at Dana-Faber is that I can combine my skill sets from my Ph.D. and post-doc, including organic chemistry, analytical techniques and computational chemistry to both design and synthesize potent and selective small molecule inhibitors for ‘undruggable’ cancer targets and also protein degradation”, she says. “I can reach this goal by either optimizing small molecules we already have and make them better, or I can start from the beginning and create novel structures for specific cancer targets.”

Researching at Dana-Faber—one of the top-ranked institutions globally for treating cancer—is a place where Sharafi feels she can make a difference.  

“Every day, I come to work, and I feel like I have a mission to help fight cancer and other diseases,” she says. “If the results I get here in the research lab can help people next door at the hospital, then I feel like I’m contributing and helping people.” 

Learn about UVM Chemistry’s graduate programs.