Daniel Allswell Darbah is a third-year PhD student in the Department of Chemistry and
Chemical Biology at the University of New Mexico. He graduated with distinction from
the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, where he earned a BS in Biochemistry and
was recognized as the Best Graduating Student of the Class of 2022. His strong
academic foundation in biochemistry has allowed him to bridge the worlds of chemistry
and biology in his graduate research.

Daniel has worked extensively on the design of supramolecular polymers and covalent
organic frameworks (COFs) that mimic natural light-harvesting systems. His research
has focused on enhancing exciton delocalization, reducing electron–phonon coupling,
and improving the chemical stability of porphyrin-based assemblies. He has
collaborated with the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT) at Sandia National
Laboratories to advance materials characterization and integrate structural insights into
next-generation organic semiconductors.

With his strong background in biological chemistry, Daniel is currently applying
comprehensive BLASTp analyses across the NCBI protein sequence database to study
the evolutionary conservation of protein sequences. This facilitates the identification
of damaging missense alleles. As part of the EquiSeq science team, he is extending the
evaluation of missense alleles in horse genes linked to exercise intolerance (e.g., MYOT, FLNC, MYOZ3, COL6A3, PYROXD1, and DYSF). Looking ahead, Daniel is especially interested in designing automated high-throughput pipelines that can expedite data generation and analysis, producing results of direct importance to both veterinary and human genetics.

Favorite Quote:  

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."