Exploiting Natures Potential

Dr Christopher Cartmell  has cultivated a multidisciplinary research career spanning natural product chemistry, synthetic biology, and microfluidic engineering. His academic journey began at Bangor University, where he received foundational training in classical organic synthesis of natural products. This early work laid the groundwork for his growing interest in complex bioactive molecules and the methods used to generate and modify them.

He went on to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of St Andrews, one of the United Kingdom’s oldest and most prestigious research institutions, with over 600 years of academic excellence. Under the mentorship of Professor Rebecca Goss, a pioneer in biosynthetic engineering, Dr. Cartmell developed and applied GenoChemetics—a hybrid approach combining molecular biology with late-stage chemical derivatization to generate novel analogues of microbial natural products. This work deepened his interest in how biosynthetic machinery could be reprogrammed and chemically extended to unlock new chemical space.

Following his doctoral studies, Dr. Cartmell was awarded a Mitacs Elevate Postdoctoral Fellowship, which brought him to the University of Prince Edward Island to join the lab of Canada Research Chair Dr. Russell Kerr, a leader in marine drug discovery. There, he shifted focus toward developing microfluidic methods for the high-throughput cultivation and screening of marine-derived microbial natural products, further integrating engineering principles into his natural product discovery toolkit.

Dr. Cartmell later joined the Antimicrobial Discovery Center at Northeastern University, working under Distinguished Professor Kim Lewis, a leader in the study of bacterial persistence and antibiotic resistance. 

He is now based at the University of Arizona, where he leads efforts to discover novel bioactive natural products from extremophilic microbes. His work exemplifies the integration of synthetic chemistry, molecular biology, and microengineering to address urgent challenges in across a range of disease states