Position Title
Associate Professor of Chemistry
Dr. Heffern earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of Southern California where she was a Women in Science and Engineering research fellow, designing synthetic routes for perovskite nanocrystals under the guidance of Professor Richard Brutchey. She earned her Ph.D. at Northwestern University. She worked with Professor Thomas J. Meade as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Program Fellow to investigate metal complexes as inhibitors of proteins involved in disease progression. Following her graduate studies, she trained with Professor Christopher Chang at the University of California, Berkeley as a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow, researching in vivo imaging probes for redox-active metals.
Her general research interests lie in interdisciplinary approaches within the field of bioinorganic chemistry with a particular emphasis in metals in medicine. She began her independent career in the Department of Chemistry at UC Davis on July 31, 2017, where her team investigates the role and influence of metals in the extracellular environment of living organisms.