Under the Scope: Recent Episodes
Aidan Looby
Do you have a friend or a professor within the field of science that participates in research? Have you ever asked them what their research is about, but then regret asking because you have no idea what they are talking about?
There are thousands of groundbreaking research projects being conducted by students and faculty across the nation. My podcast, Under the Scope, gives student researchers and science faculty a platform to talk about their research in little segments for anyone to understand, without having to sit through an entire science seminar. Along the way, we discuss why their research is important and advice to future students. If you are curious about research within chemistry, biology, and biochemistry, this is the place for you.
Dr. Anna Davis recently received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Virginia while completing research with Prof. Michael Hilinski working on using vinylazarenes as dienophiles in Lewis acid-promoted Diels-Alder reactions as well as other projects within organic methodology. Over the years, she has gained a large following within the chemistry twitter sphere; actively promoting and creating a positive atmosphere for organic chemists across the globe. Be sure to follow Anna on X: https://x.com/radscientist_
Professor Sharon Neufeldt grew up in Tucson, AZ and earned her B.S. in Chemistry at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. She began her Ph.D. studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor working with Professor Melanie Sanford on the development of Pd-catalyzed C—H functionalization reactions. In 2013, she became the Cram Teacher-Scholar at UCLA. There, she undertook postdoctoral research with Professor K. N. Houk using DFT to study the mechanism and selectivity of transition metal-catalyzed C—H activation, while also teaching sophomore organic chemistry. In summer 2016 she moved to Bozeman, MT to begin her independent career and promoted to Associate Professor in 2023. She is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award (2019), a Thieme Chemistry Journals Award (2020), a Cottrell Scholars Award (2020), and an NIH NIGMS MIRA award (2020).For more information about Sharon and her research group: https://neufeldt-chemistry.com/X: https://twitter.com/NeufeldtLab
Professor Abby Knight grew up in Charlottesville, VA and received her B.S. in Chemistry with minors in Mathematics and Biology at University of North Carolina (UNC). She then received her Ph.D. in Chemical Biology at the University of California, Berkeley in the lab of Prof. Matt Francis working on the development of a platform applying combinatorial libraries for metal ligands to address problems in water and environmental remediation. Follow her graduate studies, she completed a postdoc with Prof. Craig Hawker at the University of California, Santa Barbara designing smart nanomaterials with unique architectures.
Abby returned to UNC as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. Her group broadly work in designing macromolecular materials with functions inspired by biological systems. Some areas of research include creating biomimetic copolymers and peptide-polymer amphiphiles. Abby has recently received numerous awards such as 2023 Early Career Investigator Award from ACS Division of Organic Chemistry, 2024 PMSE Early Investigator Award from ACS Polymeric Materials, and 2024 Sloan Research Fellow.
For more information about Abby and her group: https://www.knightgroupunc.org/X: https://twitter.com/KnightGroupUNC and https://twitter.com/abigailsknight
Professor Loi Do was born in Vietnam and spent most of his youth in California. He obtained his B.S. in Chemistry/Biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) where he conducted undergraduate research with Prof. Seth Cohen at UCSD on supramolecular chemistry and Prof. Stephen Lippard at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on conjugated fluorescent probes for reactive nitrogen oxide species. He returned to MIT for his doctoral degree under the tutelage of Prof. Lippard working on synthetic diiron protein modeling chemistry. Then, he completed postdoctoral research with Prof. John Bercaw at the California Institute of Technology investigating the mechanism of selective ethylene trimerization by homogenous chromium catalysts.
He is now an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Houston where his group broadly study organometallic chemistry. Specifically investigating intracellular and polymerization catalysis. He is also a member of the NSF Center for Integrated Catalysis (CIC) which is to design catalysts with spatial and temporal control to make products from simple starting materials.
For more information about Prof. Do and his research group: https://sites.google.com/view/doresearch/home
X: https://twitter.com/DoResearchLab
NSF Center for Integrated Catalysis: https://cicchemistry.com/
Prof. Dan Weix was born and raised in Oak Creek, WI, just south of Milwaukee. After graduating high school he attended Columbia University in New York where he received his B.A. in Chemistry and conducted research under Prof. Thomas Katz. After completing his undergraduate studies, he moved to the west coast to undertake graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley where he worked with Prof. Jonathan Ellman on synthesis and application of tert-butanesulfinamide. Upon completion of his Ph.D. he began postdoctoral research with Prof. John Hartwig at Yale University, before moving with John to the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. As an NIH postdoctoral fellow, he worked on enantioselective Ir-catalyzed allylation reactions. Currently, Dan is the Wayland E. Noland Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin at Madison where his group broadly work on cross-electrophile couplings, understanding mechanisms, and using semiconductor quantum dots for organic catalysis. For more information about Dan and his group: https://weixgroup.chem.wisc.edu/X: https://twitter.com/weixgroupCheck out Julianna's work on semiconductor quantum dots: https://youtu.be/Yn21uh4_odc?si=RlCXL8GsAgZ--sVK
Josiah Newton, Ph.D., known to many as That Chemist, was born and raised in western Canada. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Simon Fraser University while working in Prof. Robert Britton's lab broadly conducting research in sulfur and fluorine chemistry. He is currently a content creator on YouTube (over 200,000 subscribers) centered around science, with a special interest in chemistry content. Make sure you follow Josiah on social media and subscribe to his YouTube channel for great chemistry content!That Chemist: https://youtube.com/@That_Chemist?si=rqEKc1sx2txAF_DE
X: https://x.com/That_Chemist
Prof. Keary Engle graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from the University of Michigan, where he carried out research with Prof. Adam J. Matzger. During undergrad, he spent one summer with Prof. A. Stephen K. Hashmi at the University of Stuttgart as a DAAD RISE Fellow, and then spent the year after graduation performing research with Prof. Manfred T. Reetz at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung as a Fulbright Scholar and with Prof. Jan E. Bäckvall at Stockholm University as an IDECAT Exchange Fellow. He completed his graduate work jointly at The Scripps Research Institute with Prof. Jin-Quan Yu and the University of Oxford with Profs. Véronique Gouverneur and John M. Brown, earning a PhD in Chemistry and a DPhil in Biochemistry. During grad school, he also carried out summer research with Prof. Kyoko Nozaki at the University of Tokyo as an NSF/JSPS EASPI Fellow. After completing a two-year appointment as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow with Prof. Robert H. Grubbs at Caltech, Keary joined the Department of Chemistry at Scripps Research as an Assistant Professor in the summer of 2015 and was promoted to full Professor in 2020. His research interests lie at the interface of organometallic chemistry, organic synthesis, and catalysis with particular interests in (pre)catayst design and studying mechanisms.
Keary's group has recently received many awards such as Catalysts Young Inverstigator Award - 2020, ChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship - 2021, International Precious Metals Institute (IPMI) Advisor Award - 2022, and Leo Hendrik Baekeland Award - 2023. For more information about Keary and his group: https://englelab.com/X: https://x.com/EngleLab?s=20
Nina Perryman, Ph.D. and Anna Lo, Ph.D. are cohosts of the Basically Doctors Podcast. Nina received her Ph.D.from UC – Davis completing research with Prof. Shaw and working on Castagnoli-Cushman multicomponent reactions. After a post-doc, she is now living in the Netherlands working as a technology scout. Anna also received her Ph.D. from UC Davis and worked in Prof. Jared Shaw’s lab doing research on diastereoselectiveallylations of chiral N-tosyl imines. She is now a Senior Scientist at AstraZeneca.
Their podcast, Basically Doctors, aims to demystify academia while also reflecting on their experiences during graduate school.
Basically Doctors Podcast
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BasicallyDoctors
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3a6XzNBAZTIuHEqa2r5Imv?si=05429aff5d064339
Follow them on X!
Basically Doctors: https://x.com/Basic_docs?s=20
Nina: https://x.com/NinaHoward92?s=20
Anna: https://x.com/imfromwhoville?s=20
Professor Mia Huang is Chinese and Taiwanese, but spent her youth growing up in the Philippines. At 18, she moved to New York to receive her undergraduate degree from CUNY Queens College. From there, she graduated from New York University with a Ph.D. while completing research with Prof. Kent Kirshenbaum. Following a postdoc with Prof. Kamil Godula at UCSD, she now runs her independent lab out of the Scripps Research Institute where she is an Associate Professor. Her group’s research interests include all things glycans, particularly in the pursuit of understanding the mechanism through which glycans orchestrate certain biological events. Some areas of research include non-canonical glycosylation, proteoglycan architecture, and glycan proofreading. She has received numerous awards recently including a recipient of 2023 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, 2023 Pivotal Life Sciences Foundation Awardee, and 2023 Ellen Browning Scripps Foundation Awardee.
For more information about Professor Huang and her group: https://www.huangresearch.com/
X: https://twitter.com/HuangMia
Professor Mike McGurik was born in Toronto, Canada and at the age of 10 his family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, where he lived through high school. He then attended the University of Minnesota, where he majored inchemistry and minored in biochemistry, graduating summa cum laude with high honors. While at the "U", he spent time in the labs of Prof. Bill Tolman (chem) and Prof. Lincoln Potter (biochem). After graduating, Prof. McGuirk spent one year working as an intern at Ecolab Inc. in Eagan, MN. He then left Minnesota to pursue his Ph.D. in chemistry under Prof. Chad Mirkin at Northwestern University, where he focused on the design and synthesis of stimuli-responsive coordination complexes for regulated catalysis. After his time at NU, he joined Prof. Jeffrey Long’s group at UC-Berkeley as a Philomathia post-doctoral fellow. In the Long Group, his work was focused on the design, discovery and characterization of non-classic gas adsorption inmetal–organic frameworks.
Professor McGuirk is now an Assistant Professor of Chemistry atthe Colorado School of Mines. His group’s research interests broadly include supramolecular materials chemistry. Specifically, the development of stimulus-responsive frameworks, chemical recycling of polyolefins, non-covalently linked porousmaterials, and unnatural DNA base pairs. He was recently awarded a Scialog Fellow for Automating Chemical Laboratories and the DOE Early Career Research Program Award.
For more information about Professor McGuirk and his group: https://www.mcguirk-supra-mat-chem.com/
X: https://twitter.com/CMikeMcGuirk
Professor John Hartwig was born outside of Chicago and wasraised in upstate New York. He received a B.A. degree from Princeton University, and a Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley under the collaborative direction of Robert Bergman and Richard Andersen. After an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellowship with Stephen Lippard, he began an appointment at Yale University in 1992, where he was an Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and then full Professor until 2004. In 2004, he was named the Irénée P. duPont Professor of Chemistry. In August of 2006, Professor Hartwig moved to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he was named the Kenneth L. Rinehart Jr. Professor of Chemistry. In August 2011, Professor Hartwig moved to his current position on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is the Henry Rapoport Professor of Chemistry.
Professor Hartwig's research focuses on the discovery and understanding of new reactions catalyzed by transition metal complexes. He has developed a selective catalytic functionalization of alkanes, a method for formation of arylamines and aryl ethers from aryl halides or sulfonates, a method for the direct conversion of carbonyl compounds to alpha-aryl carbonyl derivatives, a system for the catalytic addition of amines to vinylarenes and dienes, and highly selective catalysts for the regio and enantioselective amination of allylic carbonates. With each system, his group has conducted extensive mechanistic investigations. He has revealed several new classes of reductive eliminations, has isolated discrete compounds that functionalize alkanes, and has reported unusual three-coordinate arylpalladium complexes that are intermediates in cross coupling.
He has received numerous awards and recognitions, mostrecently achieving the 2021 Arthur C. Cope Award, 2022 Emanuel Merck Lectureship Award, 2023 Akira Suzuki Award, and 2023 Sven Berggren Prize.
For more information about Professor Hartwig and his group: https://hartwig.cchem.berkeley.edu/
X: https://twitter.com/HartwigGroup
Professor Marvin Parasram was born and raised in The Bronx, New York and a fan of the New York Giants. He received his B.S. in Chemistry in 2010 from Stony Brook University. Later that year, he joined Prof. Vladimir Gevorgyan’s group at the University of Illinois at Chicago for his doctoral studies, where he was involved in developing novel Pd-catalyzed synthetic methodologies. In 2017, he joined Prof. Abigail G. Doyle’s Group at PrincetonUniversity as a National Institutes of Health Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Postdoctoral Scholar, where he worked on the development of Ni/Photoredox catalyzed methods. In Fall 2020, he began his independent career at New York University as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry where he works on Sustainable Heteroatom Transfer Reactions Using Photoexcited Nitroarenes.
For more information about Professor Parasram and his group:https://wp.nyu.edu/parasramlab/
X: https://twitter.com/ParasramLab
Professor Daniele Leonori grew up in Italy, where he is alsoan AC Milan fan. He obtained his PhD in organic chemistry at the University of Sheffield under the supervision of Prof. Iain Coldham and then performed postdoctoral studies at RWTH Aachen University and the Max Plank Institute for Colloids and Interfaces with Professors Magnus Rueping and Peter Seeberger, respectively. He started his independent academic career at the University of Manchester in 2014, where he was promoted to Reader in 2018 and Professor in 2020. In 2022, his group moved to the RWTH Aachen University, where he is a Chair of Organic Chemistry. His group’s research interests include nitrogen/boryl radicals, halogen-atom transfer, cobalt desaturation and muchmore.
For more information about Professor Leonori and his group: http://www.leonorigroup.com/
X: https://x.com/LeonoriLab?s=20
Dr. Matthew Horwitz obtained his B.A. in Biochemistry from Columbia University in 2013 and studied computational chemistry under the supervision of Dr. Charles Doubleday. He then moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his doctoral work in organocatalysis and total synthesis under Prof. Jeffrey Johnson. During this period, he worked in the laboratories of Prof. Takashi Ooi at Nagoya University, studying asymmetric Bronsted base catalysis, and Prof. Xiaoming Feng at Sichuan University, studying N,N'-dioxide metal-ligand complexes. After completing his doctoral work in 2017, he studied synthetic photochemistry in the laboratory of Prof. Paolo Melchiorre at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ) as a postdoctoral researcher, before moving to Oxford in 2018 to work in the Gouverneur group. In 2020, he was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship and a Junior Research Fellowship at Kellogg College (University of Oxford). In 2021, he became a Scientist at Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson in Chemical Process Research & Development (CPRD) in Belgium. He currently works at Eurofins Villapharma in Spain, as Head of Scale-up Laboratory and Business Subunit and he serves on the Advisory Board of Synthesis and the Early Career Advisory Board of Tetrahedron and Tetrahedron Letters as well as the Founder & Editor-in-Chief of Synthesis Workshop. For more information about Matt and Synthesis Workshop: https://synthesis-workshop.com/
Professor Alexandra Velian was born in Tulcea, Romania, and outside of chemistry, she loves the outdoors and ballroom dancing. She completed her undergraduate studies in chemistry at Caltech, where she conducted research primarily with Professor Theodor Agapie. As the first member of his group, she developed the synthesis of low-valent mono- and bimetallic complexes supported by a terphenyl diphosphine framework. She received her Ph.D. under the direction of Professor Christopher C. Cummins at MIT, where she developed the synthesis of anthracene and niobium-supported precursors to reactive phosphorus fragments and studied their behavior using chemical, spectroscopic, and computational methods. Notably, this work gave rise to the synthesis of the 6π all-inorganic aromatic anion heterocycle P2N3−, produced in the “click” reaction of P2 with the azide ion. Following her PhD, Alexandra was a Materials Research Science & Engineering Centerpostdoctoral fellow with Professor Colin Nuckolls at Columbia University, where she worked on creating well-defined functional nanostructures by linking atomically precise metal chalcogenide clusters.
Professor Velian is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington where her group's research interests broadly include creating next-generation single atom catalysts geared to turn green-house gases like methane and carbon dioxide into value added products, and developing scalable synthetic strategies to assemble quantum materials poised to defy Moore’s law, such as two-dimensional crystals, into heterostructures with ad-hoc properties.
Professor Velian has received many recognitions and awards such as the Inorganic Chemistry Lectureship Award (2023), Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2023), Marion Milligan Mason AAAS Award (2023), C&EN Talented 12 (2022).
For more information about Professor Velian and her research group: https://sites.uw.edu/velian/
X: https://x.com/velianlab?s=20
Professor Andy McNally grew up near Liverpool, England and a season ticket holder of Liverpool FC. He received his M.A. and M. Sci. from the University of Cambridge where he also conducted research with Prof. Ian Paterson working on aldol coupling of Pelouroside A. He continued on to obtain his Ph. D. in 2007 with Dr. Matthew J. Gaunt working on a novel organocatalytic [2,3]-Wittig rearrangement using secondary amines as catalysts. Prof. McNally moved to the US as a Marie Curie International Fellow to Professor David W. C. MacMillan's at Princeton University. There, he developed the concept of 'accelerated serendipity' where high-throughput screening methods were used to discover new chemical reactions. A photoredox process that coupled amines with cyanoaromatics to make benzylic amines was discovered using this approach. He returned to the University of Cambridge for a second Postdoc with Matthew Gaunt and developed palladium catalyzed methods to activate aliphatic amines via 4-membered ring palladacycle intermediates.
Professor McNally is currently an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. His group's research interests broadly include organic synthesis and methodology of medicinally relevant compounds. In particular utilizing Zinke imine intermediates for various transformations such as halogenations and 15N-isotopic labeling. He has received multiple awards such as Sloan Research Fellowship 2020 and Eli Lilly Young Investigator 2019.
For more information about Prof. McNally and his group: https://www.mcnallygroup.org/
X: https://x.com/AndyMcNally367?s=20
Professor Josep Cornella was born in La Bisbal del Penedès, a small town in south Catalunya. He graduated from the University of Barcelona and then carried out MSc studies in the department of chemistry while completing research on allylboron reagents. After completing his masters thesis, he moved to the United Kingdom to pursue doctoral studies in the group of Prof. Igor Larrosa (QMUL). He earned his PhD working on the use of aromatic carboxylic acids as aryl donors in metal-catalyzed decarboxylative reactions. He then moved back to Catalunya, where he joined the group of Prof. Ruben Martin (ICIQ) as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow. There, he developed novel transformations involving Ni-catalyzed C–O bond activation and carbon dioxide insertion into organic molecules. Then, he obtained a Beatriu de Pinós Fellowship to carry out further postdoctoral studies in the group of Prof. Phil S. Baran at The Scripps Research Institute. During this time at Scripps, he worked on the discovery and implementation of new transformations based on the concept of “redox-active esters” as practical and readily available partners for Ni- and Fe-catalyzed C–C bond forming reactions.
In spring 2017, he was appointed as a Max Planck Group Leader in the Department of Organometallic Chemistry at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany and now leads the Sustainable Catalysis Laboratory. His group's research interests include understanding fundamental organmetallic steps of Earth-abundant transition metal and post-transition metal (nickel and bismuth) catalyzed reactions as well as using pyrylium salts for various organic transformations.
For more information about Prof. Cornella and his research group: https://www.cornellab.com/
Twitter/X: https://x.com/CornellaLab?s=20
Professor Emilie Ringe grew up in Quebec, Canada, where she began her initial studies in chemistry at McGill University. She completed her B.A. and M.S. in inorganic chemistry at Northwestern University while conducting research with Prof. James Ibers working on structure characterization of various uranium complexes with first row transition metals. She transitioned to a Ph.D. at Northwestern where she was first introduced to plasmonics working under the joint supervision of Prof. Richard Van Duyne and Prof. Laurence Marks. After a short postdoc position at the University of Cambridge, she was offered an assistant professorship role at Rice University where she began her independent career. She is now a Professor of Synthetic and Natural Nanomaterials at the University of Cambridge as a joint appointment between the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy and the Department of Earth Sciences. Her group's research interests include synthesizing and characterizing Earth-abundant plasmonic materials and utilizing optical spectroscopy instruments to study properties of nanomaterials from the millimeter to nanometer scale. Prof. Ringe was also named one of the 2021 C&EN's "Talented 12" and recipient of the 2021 Journal of Physical Chemistry C and ACS PHYS lectureship.
For more information about Prof. Ringe and her group: https://www.msm.cam.ac.uk/people/ringe
2021 Talented 12 piece: https://cen.acs.org/articles/99/i30/Emilie-Ringe.html
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RingeEmilie
Professor Ryan Shenvi grew up in Wilmington, DE, which is one of the meccas of chemistry because many chemists were eager to join DuPont in the early years of its foundation. Prof. Shenvi was originally inspired by music and art at a young age, with a particular interest in jazz. He obtained his B.S. in Chemistry at Pennsylvania State University while completing undergraduate research with Prof. Raymond Funk, which began his initial interests in natural product synthesis. He then moved to La Jolla, CA to complete his graduate studies with Prof. Phil Baran at the Scripps Research Institute. Following a postdoctoral research position at Harvard University with Prof. E.J. Corey, he is now a Professor of Chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute. His group's research interests are broadly within developing chemical reactions to traverse chemical space and synthesizing natural products, and their analogues, for medicine, agriscience, or materials.
For more information about Prof. Shenvi and his lab: https://www.shenvilab.org/
Follow Prof. Shenvi on X!
Professor Vy Dong grew up in Anaheim, California where her hobbies mostly consisted of watching sitcoms. She completed her B.S. in Chemistry at UC Irvine while doing undergraduate research with Prof. Larry Overman. She headed north to UC Berkeley to pursue her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry with Prof. Dave MacMillan before moving with the MacMillan group to CalTech to finish her doctoral studies. Her Ph.D. thesis featured variants of the zwitterionic-Claisen rearrangement and total synthesis of erythronolide B. Following a postdoctoral research position at UC Berkeley with Prof. Robert Bergman and Prof. Kenneth Raymond working in orgnaometallic and supramolecular chemistry, she started her independent career at the University of Toronto. After 6 years, Prof. Dong returned to UC Irvine where she is now a full Professor of Chemistry and received many awards such as ACS EJ Corey Award, ACS Cope Scholar Award, and Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship. Her group's research interests span many avenues such as the development of Rh- and Co-hydrides for asymmetric transformations, enantioselective hydroalkoxylations of 1,3-dienes via Ni-catalysis, enantioselective hydrothiolation, and much more.
For more information about Prof. Dong and her research group: https://sites.google.com/uci.edu/vydonggroup/home
Twitter: https://x.com/Vy_Dong_Group?s=20
Professor Lisa Olshansky began her studies at San Diego City College before transferring to UC San Diego and graduating with highest honors with a B.S. in Chemistry. She then completed her Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Prof. Dan Nocera's lab as a Presidential graduate research fellow. Following a post doc research position at UC Irvine, she is now an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Chemistry. Her group's research interests are broadly in understanding metal complexes capable of conformational changes, preparing switchable artificial metalloproteins, and applications in biomedical research and renewable energy.
For more information about Prof. Olshanky and her lab: https://www.olshanskylab.chemistry.illinois.edu/
Twitter: https://x.com/OlshanskyLab?s=20
Just a few chemistry graduate students with red beards talking chemistry. Some banter, some serious topics, all good fun. Be sure to connect with us on Twitter for more chemistry content!Noah is a graduate student at Yale University in Prof. Seth Herzon's lab and Kacey is a graduate student at Auburn University in Prof. Rashad Karminov's group. You can find us on social media here:Noah - https://x.com/NaOHBartfield?s=20Kacey - https://x.com/KCGOrtiz?s=20Aidan - https://x.com/aplooby28?s=20
Professor Steven Lopez spent much of his earlier years in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida and comes from a Cuban-American background. He attended New York University for his undergraduate degree and then moved to UCLA to pursue a Ph.D. with Prof. Ken Houk. He computationally studied various pericyclic reactions as well as organic photovoltaics. As a graduate student, he was also one of the driving forces for development of Alliance for Diversity in Science and Engineering, which is now a non-profit organization for creating an equitable, diverse, and inclusive research space for student researchers from community college to graduate school. After completing a post doc at Harvard University, he is now an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Northeastern University. His group's research interests are broadly in quantum mechanically calculations and machine learning such as non-adiabatic photodynamics of organic pericyclic reactions. His research lab is also responsible for publishing the Virtual Excited State Reference for the Discovery of Electronic materials database. For more information about Prof. Lopez and his lab: https://web.northeastern.edu/lopezlab/Twitter: https://x.com/nodecrashers?s=20and https://x.com/StevenLopez_neu?s=20Alliance for Diversity in Science and Engineering (ADSE): https://www.allianceinscience.org/VERDE materials database: verdematerialsdb.com
Professor Thomas Teets grew up outside of Cleveland, Ohio and one of his hobbies growing up was playing the piano. He graduated from Case Western Reserve University with a B.S. in Chemistry while also completing undergraduate research with Prof. Thomas Gray. He then completed his Ph.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the supervision of Prof. Daniel Nocera. After his Ph.D., he moved to Pasadena, California and completed his postdoc research with Prof. John Bercaw and Prof. Jay Labinger at the California Institute of Technology. Prof. Teets is now an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Houston where his group's research interests are broadly in designing molecules with interesting photophysical properties. These research interests in deep-blue phosphorescence, red to near-infrared phosphorescence, photoredox catalysis, supramolecular chemistry of cyclometalated iridium, and Earth-abundant photosensitizers for solar fuels.
For more information about Prof. Teets and his group: https://sites.google.com/view/uh-photochem/home
Twitter: https://x.com/ProfTeetsTweets?s=20
About Prof. Quentin Michaudel (@q_michaudel):
Prof. Quentin Michaudel was born and raised in La Rochelle, France. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, which included a six-month research internship at The Scripps Research Institute with Prof. Phil Baran, where he helped to initiate a fruitful long-term collaboration with the pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb. After falling in love with total synthesis, Prof. Michaudel returned to the Baran laboratory for his Ph.D., where he focused on C–H functionalization methods and their applications to complex molecule synthesis. In 2015, Prof. Michaudel left California and started a postdoctoral appointment at Cornell University with Prof. Brett Fors. There, he developed photocatalytic systems to enable control over polymer architectures through light irradiation. In addition to these photocontrolled polymerizations, he worked on the synthesis of sustainable polymers from biorenewable monomers. Now, Prof. Michaudel is an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University where his research interests include the development of stereoselective olefin metathesis polymerizations for the precise synthesis of alkene-containing polymers, the invention of SuFEx click processes coupled with photochemistry and catalysis to rapidly synthesize and functionalize both small molecules and polymers and the use of heteroaryne chemistry to access nitrogenated polymers with tunable structure.
For more information about Prof. Michaudel and his research group:
https://www.michaudellab.org/
Twitter: @MichaudelLab
Professor David Nicewicz completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte with Professor Craig A. Ogle. He then moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he completed his Ph.D. with Professor Jeffrey S. Johnson. His graduate research focused on novel Brook Rearrangement transformations and completed the total synthesis of Zaragozic Acid C. Following his graduate education, Prof. Nicewicz was a Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratories of the 2021 Chemistry Nobel Laureate, Professor David W. C. MacMillan. It was during this time that Prof. Nicewicz pioneered the use of ruthenium photoredox catalysis in combination with chiral amine organocatalysis to develop a general method for enantioselective aldehyde alkylation and more importantly, establishing photoredox catalysis as an emerging tool in organic synthesis. Prof. Nicewicz is now the first Royce Murray Term Professor of Chemistry at UNC Chapel Hill and his research interests are in Organic Photoredox Catalysis, Reaction Development, Natural Product Synthesis, and Positron Emission Tomography. For more information about Prof. Nicewicz and his research group: https://www.nicewiczlaboratory.com/
Twitter: https://x.com/NicewiczLab?s=20
Prof. Ding-Shyue (Jerry) Yang grew up in Taipei, Taiwan and got his B.S. in Chemistry at National Taiwan University. He then got his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology, working under the supervision of Nobel laureate Prof. Ahmed H. Zewail. Following a post doc also at CalTech, he is now an Associate Professor of Chemistry and Physics at the University of Houston. His group's research interests are utilizing Ultrafast Electron Diffraction (UED) and Scanning Ultrafast Electron Microscopy (S-UEM) for various applications in energy-related (2D, photovoltaic, ultrahigh thermal conductivity, correlated) materials, intermolecular and interfacial interactions at solid–molecule interfaces, and much more.For more information about Prof. Yang and his group: http://yang.chem.uh.edu/index.htmlTwitter: https://twitter.com/YangUEDLab?s=20
Professor Emily Pentzer grew up in Indiana and and received her B.S. in Chemistry from Butler University. She completed her Ph.D. at Northwestern University where her thesis work focused on metathesis routes for preparing and polymerizing unsaturated medium-sized lactones and lactams under the direction of Professor Sonbinh T. Nguyen. She then worked with Professor Todd Emrick in the Polymer Science and Engineering Department at UMass Amherst where she focused on the synthesis and assembly of electronically active materials for organic photovoltaics as part of a DOE EFRC on Polymer-Based Materials for Harvesting Solar Energy. Prof. Prof. Pentzer is now an Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering as well as Associate Professor Chemistry at Texas A&M University. Her lab broadly works on fundamental organic chemistry to build next generation materials; inspired by various applications, specifically for the management of energy. Her lab is interested in 2D particles at interfaces, orthogonally responsive molecules, development of novel polymer backbones by chain growth polymerizations, and additive manufacturing. Prof. Pentzer is also the Editor-in-Chief for RSC Applied Polymers. For more information about Prof. Pentzer and her lab: https://epentzer.wixsite.com/pentzerlabTwitter: https://twitter.com/EmilyPentzer?s=20
Professor Elaine O'Reilly is an Associate Professor in Chemical Biology at the University College Dublin and a native to Dublin, Ireland, having grown up there. She graduated from University College Dublin (UCD) with a Bsc (Hons) in Chemistry and began a PhD in organic chemistry at UCD with Prof. Francesca Paradisi. She then completed a post doc with Prof. Nicholas Turner at the University of Manchester. Following brief stops at Manchester Metropolitan University as a Lecturer and an Assistant Professor at the University of Nottingham, she is now back in her hometown at UCD. Her group's research interests include engineering and application of a biocatalysts and the design of efficient industrial biocatalytic processes such as using transaminases to make highly regio- and stereoselectivity amines. They also have projects that exploit enzymes including cytochrome P450s, aldolases and ene-reductases and will add some details on these projects as they develop.
For more information about Prof. O'Reilly and her research group: https://www.oreillyresearchgroup.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EORResearch?s=20
Prof. Jessica Kramer joined the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Utah in January, 2017. Prof. Kramer obtained an Honors B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Utah, where she performed undergraduate research in the lab of Prof. C. Dale Poulter. She then worked in industry for Echelon Biosciences Inc. synthesizing phosphoinositide and isoprenoid compounds and related assay products. She then began her graduate studies in the lab of Prof. Tim Deming in UCLA's Chemistry Department and obtained her Ph.D. in 2012. In 2013, Prof. Kramer joined the lab of Prof. Carolyn Bertozzi at UC Berkeley and Stanford as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow and a UC Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow. Prof. Kramer's lab is developing methods to synthesize mimics of the unique structural and signaling molecules found in nature, particularly glycoproteins, which are proteins with sugars attached.
For more information about Prof. Kramer and her lab: https://my.eng.utah.edu/~jessicak/index.html
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jesskramerutah?s=20
Professor Michael Neidig grew up on the dairy farms of central Pennsylvania before receiving his B.A. in chemistry from Colgate University. He then pursued his M.Phil degree in chemistry from the University of Cambridge working on asymmetric porphyrins. He completed his Ph.D. at Stanford University working with Prof. Edward Solomon. Following brief stops at Dow Chemical as a Senior Research Chemist and Los Alamos National Laboratory as a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Prof. Neidig joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Rochester in 2011 as an assistant professor. His research at Rochester focuses on the generation of new fundamental insight into structure, bonding and mechanism in homogeneous non-precious metal catalysis including (1) iron-catalyzed cross-coupling and (2) iron- and cobalt-catalyzed direct C-H functionalization. Further research interests include elucidation of electronic structure, bonding and mechanism in f-element chemistry. Prof. Neidig is now a professor of chemistry at the University of Oxford.
For more information about Prof. Neidig and his group: https://www.sas.rochester.edu/chm/groups/neidig/index.html (will soon be an Oxford URL)
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheNeidigLab?s=20
Professor Erin Stache grew up on the dairy farm lands in Wisconsin tending to cows, plants, and harvesting. She completed her B.S. in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay, then her M.S. in chemistry at Colorado State University with Prof. Eric M. Ferreira. Following various jobs in industry with Boeing and a Veterinarian Hospital, she completed her Ph.D. in a joint appointment with Prof. Tomislav Rovis (Columbia University) and Prof. Abigail G. Doyle (Princeton University) at Colorado State University working on photoredox catalysis to develop new synthetic methods for C–O bond activation. Then, she completed a postdoc with Prof. Brett Fors at Cornell University working on controlled cationic polymerizations using pentacarbomethoxycyclopentadiene (PCCP) and photocontrolled radical polymerizations from hydridic C-H bonds, respectively. She is now an assistant professor of chemistry at Princeton University where her research group broadly work on polymer recycling using photothermal strategies using quantum dots and photooxidations techniques as well as using discrete cobalt-hydride species for controlled radical polymerizations. Stay tuned for her group's podcast about polymers!
For more information about Prof. Stache and her research group: https://stache.chem.cornell.edu/ (soon to be Princeton URL)
LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/stachelabsustainability?utm_source=linktree_profile_share
Professor Matt Sigman is a west coast native, receiving his B.S. in Chemistry from Sonoma State University while also completing an undergraduate research fellowship with Prof. Michael E. Wright at Utah State University. He then completed his Ph.D. at Washington State University with Prof. Bruce Eaton working on catalytic cobalt mediated cyclotrimerization of alkynes in aqueous media on collaboration with NeXstar Pharmaceuticals in Boulder, CO as well as iron catalyzed [4+1] cycloadditions of allenyl substrates with carbon monoxide. Following his Ph.D., he completed a postdoc with Prof. Eric Jacobsen at Harvard University. Prof. Sigman is now a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of Utah where his group's research interests stretch from data chemistry, electrochemistry, and enantioselective catalysis.
For more information about Prof. Sigman and his research group: https://www.sigmanlab.com/
YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/@sigmangroup9647
Twitter: @Sigman_Lab
Connect with me on: Instagram: @aidanlooby Twitter: @aplooby28 LinkedIn: Aidan Looby
Professor Kara Bren grew up in the suburbs of Minneapolis, MN and got her B.A. in Chemistry from Carleton College while doing undergraduate research with Prof. Lynn Buffington. She then completed her Ph.D. at the California Institute of Technology with Prof. Harry B. Gray working on Structurally Engineered Cytochromes c with Novel Ligand-Binding Properties. During her time at CalTech, she also completed 2 summer visits at the University of Florence with Prof. Ivano Bertini researching NMR solution structures of paramagnetic heme proteins. Following a post-doc with Prof. Gerd La Mar at UC Davis, she is now the Richard S. Eisenberg Professor of Chemistry at the University of Rochester. Her group's research interests are developing and understanding bio-nano systems and biomolecular cobalt catalysts for hydrogen generation, controlling CO2 reduction products using biomolecular cobalt catalysts, and using iron complexes to reduce nitrates and nitrites to more desirable feedstocks.
For more information about Prof. Bren and her research group: https://www.sas.rochester.edu/chm/groups/bren/index.html Twitter: @BrenLab
Connect with me on: Instagram: @aidanlooby Twitter: @aplooby28 LinkedIn: Aidan Looby
Professor Tai-Yen Chen grew up in the farmlands on the eastern side of Taiwan, eventually completing his B.S. and M.S. in Inorganic Chemistry at the National Tsing-Hua University in Hsinchu, Taiwan under the supervision of Prof. Chien-Hong Cheng. He then completed his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry at Texas A&M University with Prof. Dong Hee Son working on electronic and magnetization dynamics of cobalt substituted iron oxide nanocrystals. Then, wanting to expand his knowledge and skillset, completed a post-doc at Cornell University with Prof. Peng Chen in single-molecule biophysics. Prof. Chen is now an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Houston; his lab focuses on understanding the homeostasis and regulation of copper in neuronal cells. Prof. Chen is also deeply passionate about creating a supportive environment for his students.
For more information about Prof. Chen and his research group: http://chen.chem.uh.edu/
Host: Aidan Looby Instagram: @aidanlooby Twitter: @aplooby28 YouTube: @aidanlooby LinkedIn: Aidan Looby
After growing up in North Carolina, Jarad earned B.S. and M.S. degrees at the University of Pennsylvania. While there, he worked in the lab of Professor Larry Sneddon on the synthesis of ultra-high-temperature ceramics from polymer precursors and the development of new electrolytes for lithium ion batteries. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2015 under the guidance of Jeffrey Long. At Berkeley, Jarad investigated the storage and separation of gases in metal-organic frameworks. Following graduate school, he was a postdoctoral fellow with Chad Mirkin at Northwestern University, where he used DNA to assemble responsive nanoparticle superlattices. In January 2018, Jarad began his independent career as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. His research interests tackle challenges in energy and sustainable development utilizing phase-change materials, nanocrystal frameworks, and porous nanocrystals.
For more information about Prof. Mason and his group: https://www.mason.chemistry.harvard.edu/
Host: Aidan Looby Instagram: @aidanlooby Twitter: @aplooby28 YouTube: @aidanlooby LinkedIn: Aidan Looby
Professor Lin grew up in Tianjin, China and completed his undergraduate degree from Peking University. He then pursued graduate studies at Harvard University working under the direction of Professor Eric Jacobsen. His doctoral research was focused on the development and mechanistic understanding of enantioselective reactions catalyzed by multifunctional hydrogen-bond donors. Prof. Lin then carried out postdoctoral studies with Professor Chris Chang at UC Berkeley. His postdoctoral research was focused on the design of molecularly tunable materials, such as covalent organic frameworks, as catalysts for electrochemical conversion of CO2 to value-added products. In the summer of 2016, Prof. Lin moved to Ithaca to start his independent career where he is now a Tisch University Professor in Chemistry. Research in Prof. Lin's Lab lies within the broadly-defined field of organic chemistry, with specific emphases on synthetic electrochemistry and electrocatalysis; developing methodologies that expand the scope and sustainability of synthetic chemistry using the unique capabilities of electrochemistry.
For more information about Prof. Lin and his group: https://songlin.chem.cornell.edu/
Twitter: @songlinlab
Host: Aidan Looby Instagram: @aidanlooby Twitter: @aplooby28 YouTube: @aidanlooby LinkedIn: Aidan Looby
Professor Dean Tantillo grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts and went to the same high school as famous chemist R. B. Woodward. After completing his AB in Chemistry at Harvard University, he completed his Ph.D. with Prof. Ken Houk at UCLA. Following a post doc with Prof. Roald Hoffman at Cornell University computationally studying constrained molecules, he now runs his own computational research lab at UC Davis where he is a Professor of Chemistry. His group study various mechanistic questions computationally such as cascade polycyclization reactions and understanding non-statistical dynamics effects as well as effects of entropy on selectivity during a chemical reaction. He has won numerous awards and recognitions such as Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from American Chemical Society and Inclusion & Diversity Prize from Royal Society of Chemistry.
For more information about Prof. Tantillo and his group: http://blueline.ucdavis.edu/
Twitter: @TantilloLab
Host: Aidan Looby Instagram: @aidanlooby Twitter: @aplooby28 YouTube: @aidanlooby LinkedIn: Aidan Looby
Professor Paul Rablen attended Haverford College, although initially studying physics, he switched to chemistry where he received his B.A. in chemistry. After a year as an assistant instructor for undergraduate chemistry labs at Yale University, he joined as a graduate student the following year, eventually receiving his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry. After an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at Yale, Prof. Rablen joined the faculty at Swarthmore College where he is now the Edmund Allen Professor of Chemistry. His research covers a variety of topics, both as a solo computational chemist and working with undergraduate students, such as electronic factors affect the relative amount of ortho- and para-substituted products in electrophilic aromatic substitution reactions, computational protocol for determining Hammett substituent constants, and how the distribution of alkyl groups affects the stability of allyl and pentadienyl carbocations.
For more information about Prof. Rablen:
https://www.swarthmore.edu/profile/paul-rablen
Host: Aidan Looby Instagram: @aidanlooby Twitter: @aplooby28 YouTube: @aidanlooby LinkedIn: Aidan Looby
Professor Jeremy May is a Professor of Chemistry as well as the Associate Dean of Graduate Affairs in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at the University of Houston. He is a native to the general northwest region of the United States, spending much of his younger years in Great Falls, Montana, then completed his undergraduate at the University of Utah with Prof. Peter Beal. He completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology with Prof. Brian Stoltz on the synthesis and utilization of diazocompounds for applications in solution-hhase and gas-phase Chemistry as well as progress towards synthesizing communesin alkaloids. Following a postdoc with Prof. Samuel Danishefsky at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, he started his independent career at the University of Houston. His group generally focuses on natural product synthesis such as cannabinoids (THC) and methods development such as enantioselective conjugate addition of vinylboronic acids to ß-indolyl enones and cascade reactions using carbenes.
For more information about Prof. May and his group:
http://may.chem.uh.edu/index.html
Twitter: @MayLabUH
Host: Aidan Looby Instagram: @aidanlooby Twitter: @aplooby28 YouTube: @aidanlooby LinkedIn: Aidan Looby
Professor Judy Wu grew up in Taiwan and earned her undergraduate degree from Tunghai University in Taiwan. She then obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia working with the late Prof. Paul Schleyer on various subjects within computational chemistry. After a postdoc at the same institution with Prof. Schleyer, she began her independent career at the University of Houston researching various topics within computational physical organic chemistry, namely aromaticity, anti-aromaticity and their potential applications. She has various awards such as IUPAC Young Chemist Award, NSF Career Award, and NIH MIRA Award. She is also an associate editor for Journal of Physical Organic Chemistry. For more information about Prof. Wu and her group: http://jiwu.chem.uh.edu/Twitter: @JudyWuChemHost: Aidan Looby Instagram: @aidanlooby Twitter: @aplooby28 YouTube: @aidanlooby LinkedIn: Aidan Looby
Professor Jakoah Brgoch got his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Iowa State University working on controlling magnetic structure in extended solids with Prof. Gordon Miller. He then did a Postdoc at UC-Santa Barbara working with Prof. Ram Seshadri. Prof. Brgoch is an Associate Professor at the University of Houston where he is Principal Investigator for the Texas Center for Superconductivity (TcSUH). His group works on a broad range of projects from data driven development of phosphors for LED lighting, targeting earth-abundant superhard materials, and developing nanophosphors for biological assays, and much more. Prof. Brgoch is also a huge hockey fan as he plays regularly and a fan of the Colorado Avalanche.
For more information about Prof. Brgoch and his research group:
https://www.brgochchemistry.com/
Twitter: @BrgochChemistryHost: Aidan LoobyInstagram: @aidanloobyTwitter: @aplooby28YouTube: @aidanloobyLinkedIn: Aidan Looby
Professor Scott Gilbertson is the M.D. Anderson Professor of Chemistry at the University of Houston. His group's work is at the interface of chemistry and biology, developing methods for the synthesis of small molecules to facilitate their screening for biological activity. The group also performs the total synthesis of biologically important natural products. Many of these projects are carried out in collaboration with biomedical researchers to design and synthesize molecules active in a number of therapeutic areas including, addiction, infectious disease and cancer. In this effort, he has collaborations with researchers at a number of institutions in the Texas Medical Center, including Baylor College of Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center Houston, Children’s Hospital and University of Texas Medical Branch. Professor Gilbertson was born in a small town in west central Wisconsin after a B.S. degree from UW LaCrosse and a M.S. degree from the University of Michigan, he graduated from the University of Chicago with his Ph.D. When he isn't focused on chemistry, he enjoy watching sports, in particular Liverpool FC and the Green Bay Packers. He also loves to snow ski with his family. You will likely see him walking his family's English Mastiffs (Phoebe and Rumor) on campus.
For more about Prof. Gilbertson and his group:
https://srgilber.wixsite.com/mysite
Host: Aidan Looby
Instagram: @aidanlooby
Twitter: @aplooby28
YouTube: @aidanlooby
LinkedIn: Aidan Looby
Professor Noah Burns is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University. He is a Maine native and received his B.A. in Chemistry from Columbia University as well as completed undergraduate research with Prof. James Leighton. He then went on to receive his Ph.D. from the Scripps Research Institute for his thesis in the Total Syntheses of Haouamine A with Prof. Phil S. Baran. After a postdoc with Prof. Eric Jacobsen at Harvard, he now advises his lab at Stanford working on selective halogenations and practical total synthesis of natural products among other things. He has received an NSF CAREER Award as well as Eli Lilly Young Investigator Award.
For more about Prof. Burns and his group:
https://www.burnschemistry.com/
Instagram: @burnschemistry
Host: Aidan LoobyInstagram: @aidanloobyTwitter: @aplooby28YouTube: @aidanloobyLinkedIn: Aidan Looby
Professor James Nowick got his A.B. in Chemistry from Columbia University while also completing a variety of undergraduate research projects under the supervision of Profs. Jacqueline Barton, Thomas Katz, and David Tyler, respectively. He then completed his Ph.D. and Post-doctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with advisors Prof. Rick Danheiser and Prof. Julius Rebek, Jr. He is now a Distinguished Professor at the University of California-Irvine where his group is interested in peptide synthesis and analysis. Specifically, the structure and supramolecular interactions of beta-sheets (peptides) associated with amyloid diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, as well as antibiotic teixobactin. He has plenty of honors and awards such as American Chemical Society (ACS) Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow, and Open Education Consortium Creative Innovation Award for Open Education Excellence.
For more information about Prof. Nowick and his group:
https://www.chem.uci.edu/~jsnowick/groupweb/index.html
For more about UC OpenChem and all their educational videos:
OpenChem: UCI Course Video Lectures on YouTube
Chem 203. Organic Spectroscopy Fall 2020 Lectures on YouTube
Chem 203. Organic Spectroscopy Fall 2020 Course Website
Host: Aidan Looby
Instagram: @aidanlooby
Twitter: @aplooby28
YouTube: @aidanlooby
LinkedIn: Aidan Looby
Professor Brad Carrow is my Ph.D. advisor here at the University of Houston. He also grew up in the greater Kansas City area watching the Kansas City Chiefs and Kansas City Royals. He attended Missouri University of Science and Technology along with doing material science research with Prof. Thomas Schuman. He then moved on to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for his Ph.D. under the advisory of Prof. John Hartwig studying the mechanism of various transition metal catalyzed carbon-carbon bond reactions. He did his postdoctoral research with Prof. Kyoko Nozaki at the University of Tokyo working on functionalizations of polyolefins and copolymerizations. He is now an associate professor at the University of Houston, where we broadly work on transition metal catalysis for cross-coupling reactions and polymerizations that is mechanistically and sustainably driven.
For more about Prof. Brad Carrow and our group: http://carrow.chem.uh.edu/
Twitter: @CarrowGroup
Instagram: @CarrowGroup
Host: Aidan Looby
Instagram: @aidanlooby
Twitter: @aplooby28
LinkedIn: Aidan Looby
YouTube: @aidanlooby
Professor Mary Watson grew up in Tampa Bay, Florida and completed her A.B. in Chemistry at Harvard University. She received undergraduate research experience with Prof. Kenneth Wagener and Prof. David Evans. After her undergrad, she moved to UC Irvine for graduate school and her advisor was Prof. Larry Overman, working on the development of Pd(II)-catalyzed asymmetric allylic imidate rearrangement. Following her postdoctoral work with Prof. Eric Jabobsen on Ni-catalyzed olefin arylcyanation via C-CN bond activation at Harvard, she is now a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Delaware. Her group researches stereospecific cross-couplings of amine- and alcohol-derived electrophiles and enantioselective, copper-catalyzed additions to cationic intermediate ions. She is also a co-organizer of the annual Empowering Women in Organic Chemistry conference (EWOC).
For more about Prof. Watson and her group: https://sites.udel.edu/mpwatson-lab/
Twitter: @MPWatsonLab
To stay up-to-date with EWOC (and their 2023 national conference coming in June 2023):
https://ewochem.org/
Houston EWOC Chapter Contact: EWOCTX@ewochem.org
Twitter: @EWOC8
Houston Twitter: @SpaceCityEWOC
Article about women in Process Chem:
Ruck, Rebecca T.; Faul, Margaret M. (2019-02-15). "Gender Diversity in Process Chemistry". Organic Process Research & Development. 23 (2): 109–113. doi:10.1021/acs.oprd.8b00378
Article about women in Med Chem:
Medicinal Chemistry: Where are all the women? D.M. Huryn, M.L. Bolognesi, W.B. Young, ACS Med Chem. Lett. 2017, 8, 900-902
Host: Aidan Looby
Instagram: @aidanlooby
Twitter: @aplooby28
LinkedIn: Aidan Looby
YouTube: @aidanlooby
Dillan is a biotechnology investor and operator with a background in venture capital. Prior to Mindstate Design Labs, he worked in a $1 billion venture fund, executing and managing more than fifty biopharma, medical device, and health tech investments ranging from pre-seed to publicly traded companies. In addition to his investing capacity, he took an operating role in over a dozen early-stage spinout companies. His experience spans a variety of disease indications and modalities, with a focus on deep-tech applications such as cell and gene therapies. He also holds an MBA and a Bachelor's in Finance from Robert Morris University.
Mindstate Design Lab is a psychedelic drug development company designing altered states of consciousness for mental health therapeutics.
For more about Dillan and Mindstate: https://www.mindstate.design/
Twitter: @DillanDiNardo and @MindstateDesign
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mindstate-design-labs/about/
and https://www.linkedin.com/in/dillandinardo/
Host: Aidan Looby
Instagram: aidanlooby
LinkedIn: Aidan Looby
Twitter: @aplooby28
Prof. Paul Chirik is a leading expert in the application of catalysis to challenges in sustainable chemistry. He was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Doylestown, PA. In 1995, he graduated magna cum laude with a B.S. in Chemistry from Virginia Tech under Prof. Joseph Merola. Prof. Chirik then earned his Ph.D. with Prof. John Bercaw at Caltech in 2000 studying the mechanism of metallocene-catalyzed olefin polymerization and hydrometallation chemistry. Following a postdoc with Prof. Christopher Cummins at MIT, he then joined the faculty at Cornell University in 2001 as assistant professor. In 2011, he moved to Princeton University as the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Chemistry. Prof. Chirik has many awards and honors such as a CAREER award, an AAAS fellow, and the Rylander Award from BASF. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of Organometallics. Some of his group's research interests include Co- and Fe-catalyzed asymmetric alkene hydrogenation and cross-coupling reactions.
For more information about Prof. Chirik and his group: https://chirik.princeton.edu/
Twitter: @ChirikGroup and @pchirik
Host: Aidan Looby
Instagram: aidanlooby
LinkedIn: Aidan Looby
Twitter: @aplooby28
Professor Osvaldo Gutierrez was born in Salamanca, Guanajuato, Mexico, but raised in Sacramento, California after his family immigrated when he was young. As an undocumented immigrant, Professor Gutierrez faced many challenges such as Proposition 187 through his early education. Continuing to persevere, he was accepted to UCLA in 2006 for his undergraduate degree, where he planned to become a medical doctor. Eventually, he joined Prof. Kendall Houk's group as an undergrad to take on his first computational chemistry project. He joined Prof. Dean Tantillo at UC Davis for his Ph.D. and then Prof. Marisa Kozlowski for his Post Doc. He is now an Associate Professor at Texas A&M University, where his group study Ni/photoredox-catalyzed radical cross-coupling reactions, Fe-catalyzed multicomponent radical cascades/cross couplings, and much more.
For more about Professor Gutierrez and his group: https://www.gutierrezlabs.com/ Twitter: gutierrez_lab
Host: Aidan Looby
Instagram: aidanlooby
LinkedIn: Aidan Looby
Twitter: @aplooby28
Prof. Jeff Byers was born and raised in Las Cruces, NM and obtained his Ph. D. in Inorganic Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology under the guidance of Prof. John E. Bercaw. He then completed his training with a postdoctoral position in Organic Chemistry in the laboratory of Prof. Timothy F. Jamison at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jeff started his independent career at Boston College in the summer of 2011, where he is currently an Associate Professor of Chemistry. In addition to his passion for chemistry, Jeff enjoys classic literature and film, is an avid sports fan, and enjoys spending time outdoors.
For more about Prof. Byers, his group, and other programming:
Website: https://sites.bc.edu/jeffery-byers/
Twitter: @ByersLabBC and @j_a_byers
NSF Center for Integrated Catalysis (CIC): https://cicchemistry.com/
Catalyzing eXploration in Chemistry (CXC): https://cicchemistry.com/cic-p2p-program/
Host: Aidan Looby
Instagram: aidanlooby
LinkedIn: Aidan Looby
Twitter: @aplooby28
Professor Ognjen Miljanic grew up in Serbia where he got his Diploma from the University of Belgrade (2000) and a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley (2005), where he worked with Prof. K. Peter C. Vollhardt. Following a postdoctoral stay in Prof. J. Fraser Stoddart's group at UCLA (2005–2008), Ognjen joined the University of Houston (UH) in 2008, and was promoted to Professor in 2019. Among other distinctions, he is the recipient of UH Teaching & Research Excellence, NSF CAREER, and Cottrell Scholar awards, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
For more about Professor Miljanic and his group: http://www.miljanicgroup.com/
Twitter: @MiljanicGroup
Professor Rob Comito is a New Jersey native where he got his Ph.D. at Princeton University under Nobel Prize winner Dave MacMillan working on chiral amine catalysis. Then, studied organometallic catalysis at the nodes of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) in the laboratory of Professor Mircea Dinca at MIT. Now, he is a professor at the University of Houston and his group's research interests are in main group and bimetallic catalysis for synthetic method development.
For more about Rob and his group: http://comito.chem.uh.edu/index.html
Tony Scavuzzo is from Gainesville, GA, received his Bachelor's degree from Clemson University, and is pursuing his PhD at Princeton University. He specializes in organometallic chemistry and computational chemistry, with an emphasis on density functional theory. In his spare time, he enjoys cooking, trying new foods, and learning new skills.
Tom Hanna is a Ph.D. Student at the University of Houston in International Relations and Comparative Politics. He studies autocratic leadership ideology and it is promoted within a country and/or cross culturally. We discussed the modern political environment and how one uses data/statistics to answer political science questions. Tom is also the President of the Graduate and Professional Student Association (GPSA) at UH and one of the leading voices on graduate student life.
For more information about Tom: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomlhanna/
Professor Eva Harth is from the outskirts of Cologne, Germany and obtained her Ph.D. from the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany. She is a full professor at the University of Houston and the Director of the Center of Excellence in Polymer Chemistry. Her group are the pioneers of MILRad (Metal Insertion Light-Inititated Radical) Polymerization and currently developing polar(vinyl) polyolefin block copolymers using organometallic catalysts.
For more about Professor Harth and her group: https://www.harth-research-group.org/
Autumn Weber is a rising junior at Widener University studying chemical engineering and chemistry. She is apart of 2 research projects: studying the effectiveness of household detergents to remove oil from bird feathers and theoretical chemical engineering. This summer she plans to continue her bird feather research and design a theoretical chemical plant that converts plastics into hydrocarbons using a xenolite catalyst on Aspen HYSYS.
Dr. Eslami is an Iranian native who pursued his Ph.D. originally at the University of Maryland, but finished at George Washington University. He always loved physics and mathematics, and a degree in MechE would allow him to apply what he loved to the world. His research involves Atomic Force Microscopy, which is an advanced technique to understand properties of materials. Dr. Eslami is truly passionate about providing his students with the tools to take on problems in the future.
Dr. Thompson grew up in Greensboro, NC and, at a young age, was witness to the Greensboro Massacre. Following the events, she noticed the growing popularity of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission; a new way of healing. Then, using her own experiences and knowledge of creative writing (MFA from Fairleigh Dickinson), Dr. Thompson started her own writing center around the Chester community. She is active in S.C.I. Graterford and S.C.I. Chester by offering Restorative Justice programs for incarcerated men to get an education while in prison. She even published an anthology titled Letters to My Younger Self, where prisoners of S.C.I. Graterford wrote their own stories. This episode will open your mind to the power of writing.
President Julie Wollman is a Philadelphia native and got her Ph.D. from New York University in Education. She is the recipient of the Philadelphia Business Journal's 2017 Women of Distinction and People to Watch in 2018. She is an active member in the Chester community by teaching English at the State Correctional Institution Chester. She is a role model for future leaders and loves speaking to her students.
Dr. Dipendu Saha comes from Kolkata, India and got his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from New Mexico State University. He is involved in a wide variety of research topics at Widener University including nanoporous materials to separate hydrocarbons, water purification, and separating rare Earth metals.
Chris grew up in the historic city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where he got his undergraduate degree in biochemistry. After learning medical school did not suit his interests, he moved to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and got his Ph.D. in chemistry at Carleton University. Now, he is a tenure-track professor at Colorado Mesa University; during the podcast we discuss the differences in education between the US and Canada, his various research projects, and joining Tau Kappa Epsilon as a graduate student.
Victor You is a senior chemical engineering/chemistry dual degree student at Widener University. He researches the green synthesis of a resveratrol derivatives, which are on trial for Alzheimer's treatment. He is apart of Widener's Marching Band as he has been playing the drums since middle school. He is also one of my brother's in Tau Kappa Epsilon as well as the Vice President of Community Outreach for the Interfraternity Council. You might imagine he keeps himself busy.
Dr. Mishur is a Chicago native who received his Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from Northern Illinois University. His research experience ranges from synthesizing cisplatin derivatives commonly used in testicular cancer treatment to studying mechanisms of aging C. elegans (mini worms!). On today's episode, we discuss his research as well as Chicago hotspots and the New Orleans Mardi Gras experience!
Declan is a senior Biochemistry major with a Spanish minor. He is actively involved around campus including a resident assistant at Widener University. His research revolves around analyzing genetic responses to spinal cord injuries in fruit flies.
Dr. Hongwei Yang received his Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut in Physical Chemistry. His research revolves around metalorganic framework to capture carbon dioxide. Along with his research, we also talk about one of his favorite hobbies, cooking Chinese cuisine.
For more about Dr. Yang: https://www.widener.edu/about/faculty-directory/hongwei-yang
Elena is a senior chemical engineering major and researchers cancer immunotherapy. She was born in Russia and has a natural curiosity about how the world works.
Mariam is a senior biology major with a minor in biochemistry at Widener University. She is currently the President of the Biology club and a peer-learning assistant for biochemistry. She is naturally curious about biology and genuinely wants to help people however she can. Her research involves the study of the splicing proteins of insulin signaling pathways of fruit flies.
Hanna is a senior biology major at Widener University; she is a member of the biology club, Tri Beta (biological honor society), and Alpha Omega Epsilon (ΑΩΕ). Her research revolves around the locomotion capacity and metabolic capacity of diamondback terrapins; partnered with the Wetlands Institute in Stone Harbor, NJ. She is currently studying the Shy-Bold continuum of the diamondback terrapins.
Dr. Krishna Bhat received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology. He is an associate professor of organic chemistry at Widener University as well as a two-time recipient of the Clarence R. Moll Professor of the Year award (voted by students at Widener). His research interests lie in the green synthesis of pharmaceutically relevant molecules such as resveratrol and boronic acid derivatives. Along with his research, we also talk about his journey to becoming a chemistry professor and advice for current students.