Dalibor Sames

Dalibor Sames is a Professor of Chemistry at Columbia University based in New York, New York. He previously completed his postdoctoral research as a Michael R. Bloomberg Fellow at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center after earning his master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Arizona and studying at Charles University in Prague. Sames initially joined the Columbia University faculty as an Assistant Professor in 1998 and received tenure alongside a promotion to Associate Professor in 2003. Translating his academic research into clinical development, he co-founded Kures Inc. and the clinical-stage neuroscience biotechnology company Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals in 2019 to advance novel experimental therapeutics. His current work focuses on the intersection of synthetic chemistry and neuropharmacology, specifically engineering psychoactive compounds like iboga alkaloids to treat complex psychiatric disorders and developing fluorescent false neurotransmitters for advanced synaptic imaging.