Holly E. Johnson, Ph.D.

Holly holds a B.S. in Botany from Humboldt State University, as well as a B.S. in Environmental Biology; she studied Organismal Biology and Environmental Conservation at the University of Colorado at Boulder.  She has a background in field botany and did her doctoral work at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s (UIC) Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy within the Program for Collaborative Research in the Pharmaceutical Sciences (PCRPS).  Holly was awarded a predoctoral National Institutes for Health (NIH) fellowship and worked in the UIC/NIH Center for Botanical Dietary Supplements Research.  She has an interest in bioinformatics and worked as a production associate in ethnomedicine and pharmacology for her major professor, Dr. Norman R. Farnsworth, at the NAPRALERT® database.  She has specific interest in neuro-ethnopharmacology and indigenous people’s languages, culture, and medicines.  She is currently a Research Fellow at the Institute’s Jackson laboratory.  She is working on development of the potent anti-HIV compound prostratin, isolated from Samoan Homolanthus nutans (Euphorbiaceae), as a treatment for AIDS as well as analytical methodology for detection of the neurotoxic non-protein amino acid BMAA (b-methylamino-L-alanine).

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