He earned degrees in chemistry from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and Virginia Tech. After spending two years of postdoctoral training at the University of California San Diego, he was hired into the Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy at UIC in 2010. Brian currently resides in Chicago and runs a drug discovery research program (www.uic.edu/~btmurphy) that has been featured in Chemical & Engineering News, NPR, Science Daily, and The Toronto Star, among other publications. He is a freelance writer who covers politics and issues of social equality. Follow him on Twitter @WritesofMurph and read his writings at http://writesofmurph.com/