RJ Tombari
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Graduate Student

RJ received his B.S. in biochemistry from Boston College where he studied in the lab of Professor X. Peter Zhang. While at Boston College, he examined chiral porphyrin catalysts and their potential to facilitate asymmetric cyclopropanation reactions via radical mechanisms. In the Olson lab, RJ's research focuses on photopharmacology and the development of chemical tools to probe the mechanism of action of a number of neuromodulators and psychotropic drugs. 

Publications

• Tombari, R. J.; Saunders, C. M.; Wu, C.-Y.; Dunlap, L. E.; Tantillo, D. J.; Olson, D. E. "Ex Vivo Analysis of Tryptophan Metabolism Using 19F NMR" ACS Chem. Biol. 2019, 14, 9, 1866–1873.
• Zhu, J. S.*; Larach, J. M.*; Tombari, R. J.*; Gingrich, P. W.; Bode, S. R.; Tuck, J. R.; Warren, H. T.; Son, J. -H.; Duim, W. C.; Fettinger, J. C.; Haddadin, M. J.; Tantillo, D. J.; Kurth, M. J.; Olson, D. E. "A Redox Isomerization Strategy for Accessing Modular Azobenzene Photoswitches with Near Quantitative Bidirectional Photoconversion" Org. Lett. 2019, 21,
21, 8765–8770. (*Equal contribution)
• Tsui, K. Y.; Tombari, R. J.; Olson, D. E.; Tantillo, D. J. "Reconsidering the Structure of Serlyticin-A" J. Nat. Prod. 2019, 82, 12, 3464–3468.
• Dunlap, L. E.; Azinfar, A.; Ly, C.; Cameron, L. P.; Viswanathan, J.; Tombari, R. J.; Myers-Turnbull, D.; Taylor, J. C.; Grodzki, A. C.; Lein, P. J.; Kokel, D.; Olson, D. E. " Identification of Psychoplastogenic N,N-Dimethylaminoisotryptamine (isoDMT) Analogues through Structure–Activity Relationship Studies" J. Med. Chem. 2020, 63, 3, 1142–1155.

Awards
2020 Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Fellowship
2020 R. Bryan Miller Summer Graduate Fellowship
2018 NIH T32 Chemical Biology Training Grant
2017 Bradford Borge Fellowship

rjtombari@ucdavis.edu