Charles was born in Kumasi, a culturally important city in southern Ghana. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology-Kumasi (KNUST) in 2015. During his undergraduate studies, he worked with Prof. J.K Mensah focusing on assessing the antimicrobial and antioxidant activities of secondary metabolites produced from terrestrial plants and cultured fungi. In the Fall of 2017, He joined the group of Prof. Choon Y. Lee in Central Michigan University. His Master’s research involved synthesizing water-soluble antioxidant dendrimers for biological applications. Charles joined the Prof. Tepe’s group at Michigan State University in Fall 2019. He enjoys watching soccer and cooking.

Charles’ research is focused on synthesizing piperazine based small molecules for 20S proteasome activation. The accumulation of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), often leads to the formation of aggregates which disrupt proteostasis. IPDs aggregation is implicated in neurodegenerative diseases (such as tau in Alzheimer’s, α-Synuclein in Parkinson’s, and mutant huntingtin in Huntington’s diseases). It is believed that through the activation of 20S proteasome, the cellular concentration of IDPs can be reduced thereby mitigating the deleterious effects associated their aggregation.