Tim Bugni joins the School of Pharmacy as an assistant professor in the Pharmaceutical Sciences Division. Most recently Bugni was a research assistant professor at the University of Utah, working with Professor Chris M. Ireland in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Bugni earned his PhD in 2003.

His postdoctoral work was at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, under the mentorship of Professor William Fenical. Bugni’s research interests are focused on natural products drug discovery, with an emphasis on developing methods to access new chemical diversity and methods that accelerate drug discovery. Bugni plans to develop diverse natural product libraries from unique microbes, obtained from largely unexplored environments. His past research expeditions have taken him to Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and the Solomon Islands. Bugni will be contributing to the teaching team in medicinal chemistry within the PharmD curriculum.