| Nicola Lucia B. Pohl | |
| Workplaces: | Iowa State University Indiana University Bloomington Stanford University |
| Alma Mater: | University of Wisconsin–Madison (PhD) Radcliffe College (MA) |
| Thesis Title: | Synthesis of carbohydrate-based ligands for the selectins and galectins |
| Thesis Url: | http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/39496143 |
| Thesis Year: | 1997 |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Laura L. Kiessling |
Nicola Lucia B. Pohl is an American chemist who is the Joan & Marvin Carmack Chair at Indiana University Bloomington. She also serves as Associate Dean of Natural and Mathematical Sciences. Her research considers new approaches to make and analyse sugars. In 2020 she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Pohl earned her master's degree in at Radcliffe College. She graduated in 1991 having majored in English and American literature. Her graduate dissertation considered the works of Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy.[1] After completing her master's, Pohl started a doctoral research programme in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She has said that she was inspired by her Harvard chemistry professor, Dudley R. Herschbach.[2] Her doctoral research involved the synthesis of carbohydrate-based ligands under the supervision of Laura L. Kiessling. She joined Stanford University as a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow in the research group of Chaitan Khosla.
In 2000 Pohl joined the faculty at Iowa State University.[3] She spent twelve years in Iowa, eventually being made Wilkinson Professor of Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering.[4] In 2008 she founded LuCELLa Biosciences, a spin-out company who specialise in the custom synthesis of carbohydrates. Pohl joined Indiana University Bloomington in 2012, where she was made the Professor and Joan & Marvin Carmack Chair.
Pohl is interested in the synthesis and characterisation of sugars in an effort to better understand their role in biological function. By better understanding the interactions of carbohydrates, Pohl believes that she will be able to rationally design vaccinations and other therapies. She demonstrated an oligosaccharide synthesis process that involved automated solution-phase methods. The automation process involves the use of fluorocarbon tags that can be used to pattern the surfaces of tagged molecules to form carbohydrate microarrays. Pohl spent 2019 as a Fulbright Program scholar at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna.[5]