Group News

Congrats to Jacob on Science Fair presentation

July 2025

Congrats to undergraduate Jacob Feldman, who was a finalist in the Models and Molecules Virtual Undergraduate Science Fair hosted by Schrödinger Education. Jacob is a very innovative scientist, who has been working on PCET mediators in our group, did summer work on electrocatalytic CO2 reduction in the group of Ulf-Peter Apfel in Bochum, Germany in the summer of 2024, and electrocatalysis in the group of Cyrille Constentin in Grenoble, France in the summer of 2025. Wow!

Congraduations to Alec

July 2025

Congratulations to Alec Hegg on the successful completion of his Ph.D. dissertation. Alec has made major strides in our understanding of rhenium and molybdenum systems for N2 splitting, and on the influences of isocyanide supporting ligands for enhancing the properties of rhenium systems. He will be continuing his academic path with a postdoctoral appointment with Jon Kephart at Cornell. We look forward to more great achievements going into the future!

congrats to Linda on poster award

June 2025

Congratulations to Linda Zuckerman, who won a poster prize for “Synergy Between Experimental Techniques” at the Mechanisms of Reactions (MECAREACT) conference in Paris, France. This award came to recognize her use of a wide variety of techniques in her research, which encompasses synthesis, surface spectroscopy, electrochemistry, and methods development. Great job, Linda!

Lindsey wins Heyl Fellowship

May 2025

Congratulations to Lindsey Baker, who won a Heyl Fellowship to support her research at Yale. This fellowship was generously established by a Yale alumnus to support amazing budding researchers like Lindsey, and winning this is an important accomplishment. Great job!

Alec and IRM GRS

March 2025

Congratulations to Alec Hegg, who was elected co-chair of the next Gordon Research Seminar on Inorganic Reaction Mechanisms, which will be held in 2027. Excellent leadership, Alec!

Welcome to Lindsey and Kendal

December 2024

We’re very happy to welcome two new graduate students to the Holland Group! Kendal Southwell comes to us from Trinity College, where he did research with Jason Shearer. Lindsey Baker comes to us from Kalamazoo College, where she did research with Dwight Williams as well as Tim Brewster at the University of Memphis. We’re looking forward to fun times with both of them in the coming years!

Congrats to Team Carbyne and Team N2 Splitting

November 2024

2024 has been an epic publication year for the Holland Group, topped off by two JACS papers. The first was initiated by Cory MacLeod and Sean McWilliams, who discovered a series of carbonyl and carbyne complexes, and then brought through the fire by Allie Nagelski, who changed around substituents to enable purification and did a ton of analysis. She was assisted by Sam MacMillan and Kyle Lancaster at Cornell, who made essential XAS and DFT contributions that enabled us to show that carbon bridges in diiron complexes can effectively “buffer” changes in charge, a role that may be important in the FeMoco of nitrogenase. The second was initiated by Jeremy Weber and then finished by Alec Hegg; they worked with the groups of Alex Miller and Hannah Shafaat to show a series of rhenium complexes that split N2 to nitrides, and then the nitrides can give ammonia electrochemically. Both studies involved careful mechanistic study, analysis of ligand covalency and redox activity, and careful computations that make me proud. Great work!!!

Visit NitrogenFixers.org

October 2024

Please check out NitrogenFixers.org, which we created in collaboration with the groups of Alan Goldman (Rutgers) and Alex Miller (U. North Carolina Chapel Hill) under NSF support. It describes a number of cool experiments revolving around electrochemistry, which are appropriate for students in middle school or high school. Thanks to numerous Holland Group students who have developed these activities, including Gannon Connor, Jeremy Weber, Daniel Kim, Dan DiPrimio, Allie Nagelski, Ryan Donnelly, and most of all Alec Hegg who was the major Yale driver toward the website.

Awards to Linda

August 2024

Double congratulations to Linda Zuckerman, who has received two awards based on her accomplishments. First, she was awarded a Dean’s Emerging Scholars Research Award, which provides travel support to students who have contributed to inclusiveness in the department. Then, most recently she received an ACS Leadership in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Respect Recognition Award. Both of these have as a major component the fact that she has been an inspiring leader of the Chemistry Peer Resource Advocates, who initiate and support inclusiveness initiatives in our department and help to guide community members toward university resources when they are having trouble. Congratulations Linda, and thanks for this amazing service to inclusiveness!

Congratulations Savannah

July 2024

Congratulations to Savannah Mason on her graduation with a Ph.D.! Savannah has been an amazing joint student with Scott Miller’s group for the last five years. Her magnum opus is a paper from a collaboration with Julian West and his student Sarah Buszaki (Rice Univ.) that just appeared in J. Am. Chem. Soc. Wishing Savannah the best with her coming job at MASS Analytics.

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