Written by Julia Falco
This March, in honor of Women’s History Month, the Chemistry Diversity and Inclusion Committee wanted to highlight the amazing female research faculty in our department: Professor Eranthie Weerapana and Professor Huiqing (Jane) Zhou. These women are making strides to advance the chemistry department at Boston College, while simultaneously making a major impact on the global field of chemical biology. Keep reading to learn about Eranthie and Jane’s careers as well as a token of advice they have for women in STEM! We are lucky to have Jane and Eranthie at BC!
Eranthie Weerapana, PhD: Professor of Chemistry
Bio: Eranthie completed her Bachelor’s degree at Yale University and earned a PhD in chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she studied asparagine-linked protein glycosylation in the lab of Barbara Imperiali. After completing her PhD, Eranthie worked as a postdoc at the Scripps Research Institute in the lab of Benjamin Cravatt where she developed an activity-based protein profiling platform that reports on changes in reactivity on hundreds of cysteines across the proteome. She joined the Boston College Chemistry department in 2010, where she is currently a full professor of Chemistry. Eranthie’s research lab focuses on the development and application of chemical probes and mass spectrometry-based proteomics to investigate and perturb protein activities in complex proteomes, with a particular focus on cysteine-mediated protein activities in cancer and degenerative diseases. Eranthie has over 110 publications to her name, has served as the editor of Cell Chemical Biology, and is the recipient of many prestigious awards such as the Ono Pharma Breakthrough Science Initiative Award, the NIH Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award, and the Damon Runyon Innovation Award. To learn more or keep up to date with the Weerapana lab’s latest research and publications, check out their research page here!
Eranthie’s Advice for Women in STEM: “Women often talk themselves out of pursuing certain careers in STEM because they don’t fit the required “mold”, and don’t have the attributes deemed necessary to be successful. However, there isn’t a single formula for success in any career, so know that you can forge your own individual path and still be successful. If you are excited about a career trajectory, don’t give up on it because of perceptions and stereotypes; do what excites you, do it the way that best fits who you are, and success will follow!”
Huiqing (Jane) Zhou, PhD: Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Bio: Jane completed her Bachelor’s degree at Nankai University, China, and her PhD in biochemistry at Duke University where she studied Hoogsteen Base-Pairing in nucleic acids in the lab of Hashim Al-Hashimi. She moved on to a postdoc position at the University of Chicago in the He and Dickinson Research groups where she worked on the evolution of a reverse transcriptase to map N1 -methyladenosine in human mRNA. She moved to Boston College in 2020, where she is currently an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. Jane’s research lab is interested in the developing methods for robust and quantitative detection of RNA chemical modifications to study the epitranscriptome, in addition to investigating pathogenic short tandem repeats RNA by reverse transcriptase engineering. Though early in her independent career, Jane has contributed to numerous impactful publications and received many awards throughout her scientific career including the Chicago Fellows Fellowship. To learn more or keep up to date with the Zhou lab’s latest research and publications, check out their research page here!
Jane’s Advice for Women in STEM: “When facing challenges and difficult decisions to make along the way, a general guidance I found helpful for myself has been following the genuine interest and curiosity, and trying the best I can.”
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