Frank Gasparro

I, too, am a rising senior...senior citizen that is! I am currently a chemistry teacher at Hamden Hall Country Day School and the director of its Science, Innovation, and Design (SID) program. Prior to that, I maintained a research laboratory for 20+ years at various research universities (Columbia, Yale, and Thomas Jefferson University). My laboratory focused on dermatology-related research questions and was on the forefront of elucidating the mechanisms of psoralen activation both in-vitro and in-vivo. A list of my groups' publications can be found here. After transitioning to a teaching career in 2000, I stopped conducting laboratory research in a formal capacity. Alex and I met when he was a student in my chemistry course and over time he expressed interest in conducting a psoralen-related research project. After we came up with experiments that we could perform in a limited high school lab, Alex and I worked on a research project that we published together in 2013.

In addition to my renewed interest in psoralen photobiology, I also worked as a consultant with Immunolight, a company seeking to use psoralen to treat solid tumors.

With recent advances in our understanding of psoralen's therapeutic efficacy, I hope to use this funding to expand our knowledge of psoralen's interactions with potentially unforeseen binding partners.

May 2016