Our team

Meet the team

Leadership Team
Board of Directors
Scientific Advisory Board
Strategic Pharma Advisors

Brian Paegel, PhD
Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chemistry, and Biomedical Engineering at UC Irvine

Philip Dawson, PhD
Dean, Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Professor, Department of Chemistry at Scripps Research

Michelle Arkin, PhD
Chair and Distinguished Professor, Pharmaceutical Chemistry & Director, Small Molecule Discovery Center at University of California, San Francisco

Olexandr Isayev, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University

Brian Paegel, PhD

Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chemistry, and
Biomedical Engineering at UC Irvine

Biography

Brian M. Paegel is a scientific co-founder of 1859 and Professor in the Departments of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chemistry, and Biomedical Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. His laboratory aims to deliver advanced parallel synthesis and screening platforms to support cross-disciplinary translational research initiatives. This technology was the foundation of 1859's early screening platform, with 1859 being one of four start-up companies that he co-founded. Prior to UC Irvine, Brian was an Associate Professor at Scripps Research in Jupiter, Florida, where he received the NIH Director’s New Innovator award and an NSF CAREER award in recognition of his contributions in reaction miniaturization for enzyme evolution. Prior to his research faculty appointment, Brian was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Molecular Biology and Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at Scripps Research. His research was recognized by a NIH National Research Service Award (F32) and a Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00). Brian earned a B.S. in Chemistry from Duke University, a Ph.D. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley.

Philip Dawson, PhD

Dean, Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Professor,
Department of Chemistry at Scripps Research

Biography

Philip Dawson is the Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies and a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Scripps Research. In his role as Dean, Phil oversees the Skaggs Graduate School of Chemical and Biological Sciences, a program consistently ranked among the top-10 in the nation. His research focuses on the development of synthetic tools for the chemical synthesis of proteins, oligonucleotides and their conjugates. For his accomplishments, Phil has received the 2024 ACS Cope Scholar Award, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the Vincent du Vigneaud Award from the American Peptide Society, the Max Bergmann Gold Medal for outstanding contributions in peptide chemistry, the Leonidas Zervas Award from the European Peptide Society and the Akabori medal from the Japanese Peptide Society. His work has been featured in over 150 peer-reviewed publications and he has served on the advisory boards of numerous journals, companies and international conferences. Phil earned a B.S. in Chemistry from Washington University, a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Scripps Research, and he conducted his postdoctoral studies at the California Institute of Technology.

Michelle Arkin, PhD

Chair and Distinguished Professor,Pharmaceutical Chemistry &
Director, Small Molecule Discovery Center at
University of California, San Francisco

Biography

Michelle Arkin is a chemical biologist, Professor and Chair of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, and Executive Director of the Small Molecule Discovery Center (SMDC) at UCSF. Michelle’s research focuses on developing methods and molecules that target currently ‘undruggable proteins,’ including protein-protein interactions and dynamic or intrinsically disordered proteins. This work was recognized by a 2024 Cope Scholars Award from the American Chemical Society. Michelle is a cofounder and Director of Ambagon Therapeutics, cofounder of Elgia Therapeutics, and sits on the advisory boards for several chemical biology journals and biotech companies. She is past President of the Academic Drug Discovery Consortium and past Director of the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening. Prior to UCSF, Michelle was Associate Director of Cell Biology at Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, where she helped discover inhibitors of protein-protein interactions for IL-2/IL-2R and LFA1/ICAM (lifitegrast, marketed by Novartis). She earned her PhD in Chemistry at Caltech and held a Damon Runyon postdoctoral fellowship at Genentech.

Olexandr Isayev, PhD

Associate Professor,
Department of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University

Biography

Olexandr Isayev is an Associate Professor at the Department of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University. The research in his lab focuses on connecting artificial intelligence (AI) with chemical sciences and his work has received the “Emerging Technology Award” from the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the GPU computing award from NVIDIA. Prior to CMU, he was a faculty at UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Olexandr earned his Ph.D. in computational chemistry and completed a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Case Western Reserve University.