Rate My Professor Mohammed Shaikh

Abid Shaikh is an Associate Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Biochemistry, Chemistry, and Physics at Georgia Southern University, where he joined the faculty in Fall 2010. He received his B.S. in 1998 and M.S. in 2000 from the University of Pune, India, and earned his Ph.D. in 2007 from the University of Massachusetts Boston under the supervision of Dr. Bela Torok, with research focused on the synthesis of chiral organofluorine compounds as potential therapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease. Following his doctoral studies, Dr. Shaikh served as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School in Dr. Xudong Huang’s laboratory, developing novel MRI-contrast and PET-imaging agents for the early diagnosis of cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. He then conducted postdoctoral research in Dr. Frank Schroeder’s group at Cornell University, specializing in natural product synthesis.

Dr. Shaikh’s academic interests and research specializations encompass organic synthesis, organofluorine chemistry, natural product synthesis, and heterocyclic chemistry. In his laboratory, students receive training in organic synthesis techniques, including experimental design, literature searches, purification, and characterization of organic compounds using advanced research instruments. His scholarly contributions include key publications such as “Electrochemical Halogenations” (Adisa, A. & Shaikh, A., 2025, Encyclopedia of Green Chemistry), “(Diethylamino)sulfur trifluoride (DAST)-mediated oxidation of benzylic alcohols and amines to carbonyl compounds” (Smeyne, D. et al., 2024, Synthetic Communications), “Discovery of Quinoline-Derived Trifluoromethyl Alcohols as Antiepileptic and Analgesic Agents That Block Sodium Channels” (Williams, A. et al., 2022, ChemMedChem), and “Electrochemical esterification via oxidative coupling of aldehydes and alcohols” (Smeyne, D. et al., 2021, Tetrahedron Letters). These works advance green chemistry methodologies and the synthesis of biologically active compounds.