Vik Shende teaches Biochemistry and Organic Chemistry, and his research group investigates how enzymes can be used to efficiently assemble complex molecules.
Vikram (Vik) Shende attended the University of Michigan-Dearborn for his undergraduate degrees in Chemistry and Biochemistry. After a brief stint in industry, he returned to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for his graduate studies working in the laboratory of Professor David Sherman where his research focused on the characterization of diketopiperazine alkaloid tailoring enzymes. As an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor Bradley Moore at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, he identified novel biosynthetic pathways from non-model marine eukaryotes. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry where his research group seeks to discover new molecules from Nature and examine their biosynthesis through a combination of synthetic chemistry, biochemistry, bioinformatics, and synthetic biology.