Adekunle “Kunle” Adewole isn’t a stranger to the spotlight, having grown up singing at family functions and performing in theater productions. He also has fervently watched “The Voice,” a singing reality competition television series, envisioning himself performing on stage.
“’The Voice’ is part of my singing journey. I've always wanted to do it, and maybe at some point I'll get the chance to perform there,” he said. “I’d probably sing ‘Jealous’ by Labrinth, or ‘Get to You Again’ by Mac Ayres.”
For now, the Chemistry and Biochemistry Ph.D. student is focused on delivering his three-minute presentation, "Zipping and Unzipping Peptide Tiles: A Targeted Approach to Medicine," at the University of California Grad Slam competition on April 29.
His performance at the campus finals in March earned him UC Merced’s 2025 Grad Slam Champion title, a $5,000 grand prize and the opportunity to represent the campus at the systemwide event.
Environmental Systems Ph.D. student Zachary Malone was awarded second place and $2,000, and third place and $1,000 went to Cognitive and Information Sciences Ph.D. student Helia Hosseinpour.
“It’s a huge honor to represent UC Merced. I feel like I bear the identity of the university now in some capacity, and I can't let people down,” Adewole said. “I'm giving it my best to represent myself, represent my project, represent my research, represent my department and represent UC Merced.”
He was inspired to compete during last year’s campus Grad Slam competition when his girlfriend, graduate student Alejandra Santoyo, secured second place.
“I was at the talks and my advisor said, ‘you should do this next year.’ My department chair was also there, and he said, ‘you should be here next year.” As the deadline to register for the 2025 competition drew closer, Adewole said he thought, “It's kind of my thing because I'm very extroverted,” and he submitted his qualifying round video and was selected as a finalist.
Adewole joined UC Merced in 2021 after receiving a bachelor’s degree from Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria. He joined Professor Andrea Merg’s lab in 2023 where he works with peptides, which are like proteins, but smaller.
“We’re designing peptides that fold like a protein through coiled coil interaction. They can be thought of as zippers we can use for applications like drug delivery or biological sensing by designing these peptides through sequence engineering,” he said.
These interactions are the basis of his Grad Slam talk.
“They're very proliferate. Nature uses them to do important things in our bodies, for example, to determine how our hair forms. To advance areas like medicine, we can design these new materials to deliver drugs,” Adewole said. “In my research, I'm using the zipper-like interaction to make this cage that can be useful in drug delivery for cancer, for example. You can zip and unzip the cancer drug using that cage.”
After earning his doctoral degree, he plans to take this knowledge of bioanalytical chemistry and peptide engineering design and use it in industry, possibly for biopharma research.
“I see myself discovering new molecules to drive new technologies that make new treatments possible,” he said.
When he’s not working in the lab, Adewole sings with the Bobcat Band’s jazz combo “Jazzcats” and in his local church’s choir. If he wins the Slammy at the Grad Slam finals, perhaps he’ll sing a lyric for the audience while accepting his trophy.
Everyone is invited to watch the UC Grad Slam finals via livestream beginning at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, April 29, and cast a vote for Adewole for the People’s Choice Award at the end of the talks.
