Dr. Karen Torraca
Karen Torraca joined the faculty at Houghton in the fall of 2007
after working as a Senior Research Scientist at Eli Lilly and
Company in Indianapolis for the last five and a half years.
She holds the BS in chemistry from Houghton College and the PhD from
the University of Florida. She also has held a NIH
Postdoctoral Fellowship at MIT with Prof. Stephen Buchwald,
researching palladium-catalyzed carbon-oxygen bond formation.
As a result of her diverse experiences in academia and the
pharmaceutical industry, she has developed an interest in
researching environmentally-friendly synthetic organic methodologies
which can be applied to the synthesis of active pharmaceutical
compounds at large scale.
In addition, Dr. Torraca is interested in elucidating mechanisms and understanding side-product formation in developed synthetic methodologies. She is glad to have the opportunity to be back at Houghton as a professor. She says, “Houghton made such a large impact on my life as both a scientist and a Christian, I’m glad God gave me the opportunity to pass some of that along to future students.”
Dr. Torraca enjoys cooking, hiking, and rock collecting but spends most of her free time enjoying her four-year old twins, Warren and Nicole. Dr. Torraca is also extremely thankful for her husband, Peter, who currently stays home with the children.
