Peyton Higgins

Peyton Higgins ’18 rejoined the Smith community as a visiting assistant professor in 2025. As a teaching focused faculty member for general and organic chemistry, their goal is to teach chemistry as a framework for asking interesting questions about the world around us. They view the introductory chemistry classroom as a space to develop critical skills and encourage curiosity.

Higgins studied biocatalysis as a graduate student at UW-Madison in professor Andrew Buller’s lab. Their research focused on methods for enzymatic catalysis to achieve regioselective alkylation of indoles. In addition to synthetic chemistry, they studied protein engineering, enzyme kinetics, protein X-ray crystallography, and bioinformatic tools. As a postdoctoral researcher, they worked with faculty in the Food Science and Plant & Agroecosystem Sciences departments at UW-Madison to develop a high-throughput screening platform that uses near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy to predict the nutrition content of hazelnuts. So far, their research interests have touched on many fields, all of them supported by an educational background in chemistry.

(* denotes equal contribution)

Higgins, P. M.; Wehrli, N. G.; and Buller, A. R. “Substrate-Multiplexed Assessment of Aromatic Prenyltransferase Activity” ChemBioChem. 2025, 26 (1), e202400680.

Villalona, J.; Higgins, P. M.; and Buller, A. R. “Engineered Biocatalytic Synthesis of β‐N‐Substituted‐α‐Amino Acids” Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2023, 62 (43), e202311189.

McDonald, A. D.*; Higgins, P.M.*; and Buller, A. R. “Substrate multiplexed protein engineering facilitates promiscuous biocatalytic synthesis” Nat. Comm. 2022, 13, 5242.