Alexander Hurben

Department: Chemistry
Faculty Adviser: Chris Chang
Year of Study:
Undergraduate School: University of Minnesota
Undergraduate Major: Chemistry

Personal Bio

I was born in Colorado, where my parents met in grad school. As I kid, I was always fascinated with science and learning new things. This eventually brought me to the University of Minnesota, where I studied chemistry and started doing undergrad research in the area of chemical biology. This was a formative experience for me that really shaped how I ended up at Princeton and I would love to share that story with an undergraduate mentee with the hope that it helps their future development and well as the many lessons I have learned in my PhD and postdoc experiences.

Fun Fact

In undergrad, I was really into bodybuilding and actually won a Mr. Minnesota competition

Research Pitch

I am currently in the chemistry department. My research is about developing chemical reactions that allows us to track and detect important biomolecules within cells. The complexly of the cell makes this inertly challenging but our chemical tools enable us to understand the molecular mechanisms of how cells work and see how they become unraveled in diseases. Thus, this research has an impact on improving our foundational understanding of biology and driving therapeutic innovation. Currently I am synthesizing small molecule probes that react with specific amino acids to enable their detection in live cells and designing H2O2 probes for cancer diagnostics. I use organic chemistry, biochemistry, cell culture, and state of the art analytical instrumentation pretty much every day to do this research.

Upcoming Programs That I Am Attending:

Plans for Summer 2025

Interested in participating in Summer 2025 ReMatch+ program.