Amber Scharnow

she/her/hers

Postdoctoral Fellow

Email: ascharnow@fas.harvard.edu

Twitter: @AmberScharnow

Amber was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, and went on to obtain a B.A. in chemistry from Barnard College, Columbia University in 2017. During her undergraduate career, she developed novel methods for the synthesis of 2-amino sugars and their use in neoglycosylation reactions in the lab of Professor Christian Rojas. She then received her Ph.D. in chemistry from Emory University where she worked in the lab of Professor Bill Wuest. Her doctoral work entailed the synthesis of natural product analogs and employing them as tools to identify new bacterial protein targets, as well as investigating the mechanism of action and resistance of novel quaternary phosphonium antibacterials. 

As a postdoc, she is interested in the biochemistry of the cell wall and outer membrane proteins. 

Outside of the lab, Amber enjoys hanging out with her cat (Marcus) and dog (Tatiana), hiking, drinking coffee, baking, and watching bad reality TV.