Daniel is a second-year chemistry major at UCLA and a member of the PEERS program. He is a native of Los Angeles who hopes to be a researcher in the field of pharmaceuticals. He has been part of Dr. Alexander Spokoyny’s lab since Fall 2022, where he is involved in the use of organically coordinated gold compounds to facilitate selective bioconjugation of cysteine in peptide chains. These bioconjugates show promise that they may be able to protect chemicals or other biomolecules from harsh environments in the body, thus allowing for use in targeted therapies as well as opening previously impossible treatment avenues. To this end Daniel aids in the synthesis of compounds used to achieve these bioconjugates as well running simulations using density functional theory (DFT) to better understand the mechanisms of these reactions.