Karen Torraca

Karen Torraca is a Professor of Chemistry and Alan & Florence Johnson Distinguished Chair in Health Sciences at Houghton College. She holds a BS in Chemistry from Houghton College (2002), a PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of Florida (2007), and completed a NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship at MIT under Prof. Stephen Buchwald. Her research focuses on developing environmentally-friendly synthetic methodologies for pharmaceutical applications. Dr. Torraca teaches courses including Organic Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry, and Advanced Organic Chemistry. Her work emphasizes scalable green chemistry solutions and mechanism elucidation in oxidation reactions.

• Education: BS Chemistry (Houghton College), PhD Organic Chemistry (University of Florida), Postdoc (MIT)
• Research: Green synthesis, palladium-catalyzed reactions, sustainable solvent systems

Her mentored students have presented work at ACS and regional conferences. She actively engages in undergraduate research through Houghton’s Shannon Summer Research Institute and Chemistry Capstone program.