Bryan A. Hanson
Chemistry and Biochemistry
Professor of chemistry and biochemistry
Specialties:
Organic chemistry, Biochemistry, Natural products, Medicinal plants, Medicinal plants of Indiana, Dyes, Pigments
Bio:
Bryan Hanson works to understand the natural world from a chemical perspective. More specifically, he is interested in “natural products,” which are chemicals isolated from nature (plants, bacteria, fungi, sometimes animals). Many of these are of medicinal or practical use (e.g., dyes). This led to his interest in ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology, which is the study of how people use plants and how they use natural materials as drugs. Another area of interest is plant biochemistry, which one has to understand as a foundation to all the topics above. In recent years, his interest has developed into a study of plants under stress, a project started in collaboration with Dana A. Dudle, DePauw professor of biology. Hanson maintains a website on his research at http://academic.depauw.edu/~hanson/PlantMetabPages/PlantMetab.html.