Bereket Zekarias

Graduate Student

Owen Group

Columbia University

Bereket Zekarias was born and raised in the vibrant city of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She came to the states at 16 to attend an international boarding school in Montezuma, New Mexico. After two years in beautiful Montezuma, she attended Brown university and studied biochemistry and molecular biology. After a gap year at home, she moved back to the states to pursue her masters in pharmaceutical sciences at University of Wisconsin-Madison. During her graduate studies, she synthesized analogues that were potent against Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV) and worked on the rearrangement of chloroquinazolinones to twisted-cyclic guanidines or ring-fused N-acylguanidines. Finding the prospect of living in New York City irresistible, she moved to Columbia university and joined the Owen lab to study quantum dots' surface coordination chemistry's role in photocatalysis. Bereket enjoys writing short stories, reading and watching movies.