Lehmann supports senior leadership in driving the organization’s strategic plan and due diligence projects. She has a background in project management and strategic planning for innovative and mission-driven organizations. Before joining Southern Research, Lehmann led strategic projects and economic development at Ed Farm, a STEM education non-profit headquartered in Birmingham which is partnered with Apple’s Community Education Initiative. At Ed Farm, she also assisted with early program development for the Propel Center, a $50M initiative spearheaded by Apple and Southern Company to create a global campus for HBCU collaboration in Atlanta. A Massachusetts native, Lehmann moved to Birmingham through a Venture for America fellowship. She is a member of the Rotaract Club of Birmingham and the Vulcan Park and Museum’s Junior Leadership Board. She has a bachelor’s degree in urban studies from Columbia University and is working toward a credential as a project management professional.

Rasmussen joined Southern Research in 2004 and is the supervisor of the High-Throughput Screening Center. Her background in laboratory automation and infectious disease research has been instrumental in developing this capability at Southern Research. Her many experiences in research include pivotal work in recent years to find treatments for COVID-19. She has bachelor’s degrees in both chemistry and biology from Virginia Tech and a master’s degree in biomedical sciences from Hood College. Rasmussen is a member of the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening, and she chairs the Special Interest Group on Labware Leachables.

Nurre is responsible for implementing best practices for compliance with accounting standards and financial regulations governing federal contractors and non-profit organizations. She is acting controller with full finance and accounting responsibilities. She supports operating divisions with financial analyses, budgeting, and strategic planning. She has more 35 years of experience in public corporate accounting and finance with the majority of her career focused in the life sciences and pharmaceutical industries. Prior to joining Southern Research, Nurre served as controller for Evonik Corp.’s Birmingham Laboratories business. Nurre received a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Xavier University in Cincinnati and a master’s in business administration from the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio. She is also a licensed certified public accountant and Chartered Global Management Accountant. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and National Contracts Management Association.

Syed serves as chemical process engineer at the National Carbon Capture center, a U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored facility. The National Carbon Capture center is an internationally known neutral test facility that evaluates carbon capture technologies from third-party developers, such as research organizations, universities, and engineering firms from around the world. As an engineer, Syed is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the gas analysis laboratory located in Wilsonville, AL. Syed began his career with Southern Research in 2021, and prior to joining the team, he worked as a process engineer for four years in the design, testing and development of Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) reactors and other innovative emissions controls technologies for power-generating and manufacturing plants. Syed holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Mississippi State University, and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Alabama in Birmingham.

Moukha-Chafiq has almost 20 years of experience performing research at Southern Research. He has been involved as a lead chemist or key team member in research for potential treatments for diseases such as cancer, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease, and he initiated and/or contributed to research projects to develop new drugs to fight viruses like HIV, bacteria like tuberculosis, and other diseases. He contributed to discovering two compounds now in phase 1 clinical trials as potential treatments for advanced solid tumors and for acute myeloid leukemia, and he played a role in potential treatments that are under preclinical investigation for several cancers, including pancreatic and colon. Mouka-Chafiq attended the University of Cadi-Ayad in Morocco, in collaboration with the University of Montpellier-France. He has a bachelor’s degree in organic chemistry, as well as a master’s degree and doctorate in nucleosides chemistry. He joined Southern Research in 2002 as a postdoctoral fellow in medicinal chemistry.

Paige Vinson, Ph.D., leads a team of scientists in Southern Research High-Throughput Screening Center, where advanced robotic equipment sifts through hundreds of thousands of compounds looking for potential treatments for viruses, bacterial infections and diseases like diabetes, cancer, and cystic fibrosis. This capability, paired with cell-based and biochemical assays selected to reflect the biology being studied, provides a foundation that supports hit identification as well as downstream drug discovery efforts.
She gained experience in providing high-throughput drug discovery solutions to researchers in both academia and industry as part of the laboratory automation business unit at Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Following this role, Vinson returned to a research environment at Vanderbilt University where she spent twelve years participating in team science, including drug discovery efforts, both as director of HTS and in the molecular pharmacology group of the Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery. During this time, she helped bridge academic investigators’ basic research to early translational stages and helped drive later-stage projects by providing in vitro pharmacology support.

Serving on multidisciplinary project teams, including several partnerships with biopharmaceutical companies, has given Paige a broad perspective of the early drug discovery landscape. Vinson holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of South Alabama and a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from Emory University where she applied analytical approaches to answer questions in neuroscience. She completed postdoctoral training at Emory University performing biochemical and enzymological studies of monoamine oxidase A and B. Her drug discovery experience spans different target classes and diseases but has primarily focused on GPCR targets in CNS disorders. She brings her love of data-driven approaches and team science to Southern Research.

Boohaker is the study director for the oncology department. She designs, oversees, executes and interprets all cancer-related in vivo studies to evaluate potential cancer treatments, including cancer-fighting viruses and other agents that might help combat the disease. Trained primarily as a molecular biologist, Boohaker’s graduate work at the University of Central Florida resulted in a targeted peptide therapy to combat triple negative breast cancer. Since joining Southern Research, her recent work has focused on chemo-resistant colorectal cancers, as well as pancreatic cancers, which are aggressive and highly resistant to treatment. Boohaker received a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a doctorate in biomedical sciences from the University of Central Florida. Her postdoctoral work at Southern Research focused on cancer biology and DNA damage repair.

Cowell maintains an independently-funded research program and oversees the Neuroscience Department, with the mission of discovering new treatments for people with neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, Huntington disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and Alzheimer’s disease. She has more than 20 years of experience and expertise in this area, has more than 30 publications in journals, has authored four book chapters and published almost 50 abstracts. The Cowell Lab is currently supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. Cowell received her bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Michigan, where she also completed her postdoctoral work. Before joining Southern Research in 2017, she began her independent research laboratory at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she also served as co-director of the Neuroscience Graduate Theme for the UAB’s biomedical sciences program and associate director for communications and outreach for the Civitan International Research Center.

Sixue Zhang, Ph.D., has more than 10 years of experience in computer-aided drug discovery. He obtained a Ph.D. of computational chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with the J. & M. Witt Fellowship under the supervision of Prof. Sharon Hammes-Schiffer. Since joining Southern Research, Dr. Zhang has collaborated with more than 20 multidisciplinary teams from both academia and industry for more than 50 drug discovery projects covering oncology, neurology, infectious diseases, and other therapeutic areas.

His team is part of Southern Research’s integrated Design-Make-Test-Analyze drug discovery platform. His team leverages latest artificial intelligence and next-generation molecular modeling technology to facilitate drug discovery pipelines from therapeutic target discovery all the way to clinical stage. For example, aided by AI models developed with vast in-house assay data, his team quickly discovered highly potent novel antiviral inhibitors that otherwise would take years to discover. Besides, Dr. Zhang serves in editorial board of scientific journals, professional committees, as well as speakers in national and international conferences.

Coulter provides strategic guidance and leadership for all human resources operations at Southern Research and sets the vision and direction for the full complement of core human capital programs, policies, and services. Coulter has more than 20 years of human resources experience. Immediately before joining Southern Research, she was a human resources manager for Boeing, with responsibility for performance support and employee wellness programs across multiple states. She is a member of the Birmingham Chapter of the Society of Human Resource Management and the Junior League of Birmingham. She is a graduate of the Momentum program for women in leadership in Birmingham. Coulter holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s in business administration degree from Southern Illinois University.