Dr. Stephen A. Kolodziej (BA 1987, PhD 1992)

Steve is an Associate Research Fellow at Pfizer, Inc., in St. Louis. After graduation from RudiWinter's research group, he did postdoctoral work at Washington University School of Medicineand then joined Monsanto as a Research Associate. After just over one year he became SeniorResearch Investigator, Group Leader and Associate Fellow and finally Associate Fellow with thecompany as it morphed through Searle, Pharmacia into Pfizer. Like many of our current students,Steve transferred to UMSL from the St. Louis Community College and went on to great success.He participated in one of the College of Arts and Sciences Hellen and Will Carpenter Series onContemporary Issues in American Society Lectures in 2015. In 2012 he began collaborating withCurators’ Distinguished Professor of Chemistry Alexei V. Demchenko. Alexei is a carbohydratechemist and his work related to the polysaccharides, chains or sheets of sugar molecules bondedtogether. Sugars are very useful in facilitating drug delivery and Steve and Alexei have beeninvestigating capsular polysaccharides in this respect. The collaboration has led to substantialfunding from Pfizer for the Demchenko Laboratory and to a series of peer-reviewed publicationscoauthored by the two. This collaboration has been going on for quite some time. One of Steve'shobbies is music - he is the bass guitarist for the group Roofrockers.