Dr Bryson Hawkins

Dr Bryson Hawkins is a Lecturer in Pharmaceutical Sciences in the School of Health Sciences (Pharmacy), Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of New South Wales.

Bryson, completed B.Pharm (Hons I) in 2017 at Sydney Pharmacy School (SPS), University of Sydney, before joining Royal North Shore Hospital (RNSH) as clinical pharmacist. In 2019 he returned to SPS for his doctoral training graduating in 2022. His PhD work employed high-resolution X-Ray Crystallography to investigate the weak interactions within polymorphic pharmaceutics, including co-crystals, aiming to decode the interaction networks to improve the physical and chemical properties of drug molecules.

Following his PhD, Bryson held an education-focused lecturer position in the SPS, before joining Prof. Kim Lewis' Antimicrobial Discovery Center (ADC), Northeastern University, Boston USA. As a Research Scientist at the ADC, Bryson worked in the drug discovery arm of the ADC focusing on the discovery and enhancement of antibiotics, like darobactin, which can treat infections caused by Gram-negative ESKAPE pathogens like Pseudomonas aeruginosa. To do this he used many techniques to cover the vast amount of chemical space seen in natural products. These included in silico modelling, genome mining, high-throughput screening, and targeted genetic modification of natural product producers.