About Prof. Avalon

Bio

Nicole E. Avalon is an Assistant Professor at University of California Irvine's School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Dr. Avalon is working in the scientific space where natural products chemistry and neurotherapeutics intersect. 

Dr. Avalon's research thus far has included drug discovery, natural product isolation, structure elucidation, microbial genomics, bioassay development, and neuroscience. She is  drawn to both the logical nature of biosynthetic gene clusters as well as the unexpected non-canonical enzymatic reactions that contribute to the beautiful architectural diversity we see in natural products. As a clinically trained professional with a PhD in Chemistry, Dr. Avalon focuses her research at the molecular level while maintaining perspective on the larger potential health implications, the epidemiology, and the clinical picture.  She joined the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California, Irvine in March of 2025. Being situated in such a rich interdisciplinary research environment will allow her to train the next generation of diverse researchers to bridge the gap between the rich resources of the marine environment and the need for novel neurotherapeutics.

Dr. Avalon is an American Academy of Underwater Sciences Certified Scientific Diver and looks to the oceans for Nature’s cures to human disease. In her free time, she also enjoys creating art and hiking with her family.  

Education and Training

Dr. Avalon began her academic journey at the University of South Florida, where she graduated summa cum laude with a BS in Biomedical Sciences and a minor in Public Health. She then obtained her master’s degree at the University of Florida in Physician Assistant Studies. She practiced medicine and did clinical research for several years as physician assistant at Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville working in neurocritical care and sleep medicine. She then pursued her PhD in Chemistry under the mentorship of Bill J. Baker at the University of South Florida, where she studied natural products from cold-water marine organisms collected from Antarctica and Deep Sea Ireland. The bulk of her postdoctoral training was at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, where she was funded by an NIH NRSA F32 postdoctoral fellowship through National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. During this time, she worked under the mentorship of William Gerwick (Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD) and Pieter Dorrestein (Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, UCSD) studying natural products isolated from marine cyanobacteria with an emphasis on metallophores, metabolomics, structure elucidation, virtual screening, and genome mining in search of novel cathepsin inhibitors and other biologically active molecules.