Group News

Conner's excellent paper

January 2024

Congratulations to Conner Wilson on the acceptance of his outstanding paper on the mechanism of oxidative MHAT reactions, which is appearing in J. Am. Chem. Soc. It describes a thorough combination of identifying cobalt species, monitoring catalytic reactions, and analyzing kinetics; this was used to identify active catalyst species and recommend better conditions for future synthetic chemists. Great job, Conner!

Welcome to Nere and Ryan

November 2023

This month, we welcome two new postdocs to the lab. Nere Hidalgo Reinoso comes to us from Ph.D. work with Jesus Campos at Seville and postdoctoral work with Didier Bourissou in Toulouse, and won a prestigious Marie Curie fellowship for work on our iron systems. Ryan Walser-Kuntz comes to us from Ph.D. work with Melanie Sanford at the University of Michigan, and will be working on bioinorganic modeling and electrochemistry. Welcome to both, and we look forward to research fun together!

trip to spectroscopy summer school

October 2023

A fun time was had by current group members Juan Serviano, Teddy Gerard, and Sam Newman-Stonebraker, who traveled to Germany for the MPI Summer School on Spectroscopy and Electronic Structure of Transition Metal Complexes. This is a great opportunity to interact with our collaborators at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion, to learn details of spectroscopy and DFT calculations that are integral to our research, and to experience the different culture. An added bonus this time was their opportunity to meet group alumnus DK Kim who was also in attendance.

papers from our postdoc crew

September 2023

Congratulations to Alex Genoux and to Majed Fataftah on the appearance of excellent papers on their research. Alex was the driver behind a collaboration with the groups of Paul Maggard (at North Carolina State) and Hailiang Wang (here at Yale) to characterize iron sites in a carbon nitride material that can perform nitrate reduction. This appeared in J. Am. Chem. Soc. Majed Fataftah did key magnetism measurements on this material, and much more effort on interesting new ketenylidene complexes that have now appeared in Chem. Eur. J. These teach us - and the community - about how carbon bridges mediate valence delocalization and magnetic coupling between iron sites, which is relevant to the active-site cofactor of nitrogenase enzymes. Congratulations to both, and well done!

Congraduations to Reagan

July 2023

A big congratulations to Reagan Hooper, who defended her thesis in June. Reagan has been a really key innovator in the lab, including her newly published idea of accessing C/S chelating ligands for Fe using C-S bond activation chemistry. She has also been our group computational guru, and epitomizes the kind of person who not only does well themselves but also makes everyone else around them better too. We will miss Reagan, but look forward to her future successes. Her next stop is a postdoc at Stanford with Amy Cordones-Hahn and Kelly Gaffney… best wishes for the future!!

Congraduations to Elena and Maria

May 2023

Our “Dynamic Duo” of Yale seniors, Elena Urquiola and Maria Grillo, completed their undergraduate degrees today with flying colors. Both longtime researchers in the lab have been inspirational, including their deep involvement with everything in the lab, exceptional enthusiasm and spirit, grit and persistence in research, and outstanding academic performances. Both are off to spectacular chemistry careers, which will continue with Ph.D. research at MIT (Maria) and Caltech (Elena). So glad we’ve had the opportunity to get to know you, and we’ll keep in touch!

Majed is going to UIUC

April 2023

Congratulations to postdoc Majed Fatafah, who has accepted a faculty position at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Majed has been a huge contributor to our group’s efforts on synthesis, magnetism, spectroscopy, and everything else during his pandemic-riddled time with us. We look forward to seeing your own independent career flourish!

Farewell to Chris and Alex

March 2023

Congratulations to Chris Gendy and Alex Genoux, postdocs who are both moving on to the next stages of their careers. Chris is continuing his joint postdoctoral appointment in Finland, where he is completing our work on new low-coordinate iron complexes. Alex has a habilitant position at the EPFL in Lausanne, where he will begin his own independent research. Both of them have made numerous contributions to the group, and I’m sure that each will go on to continued success!

Welcome to Simon and Sam

March 2023

We welcome two new postdoctoral coworkers this month to the lab. Simon Suhr comes to us from Biprajit Sarkar’s group at U. Stuttgart, and has won a Feodor Lynen Fellowship from the Humboldt Foundation that will support his research on catalytic N2 reduction and PCET. Samuel Newman-Stonebraker comes to us from Abby Doyle’s lab at UCLA, and will be working on bioinorganic model complexes. We are super excited about each of these accomplished, creative researchers who will be adding a lot to the group!

Congraduations to Conner

March 2023

Congratulations to Conner Wilson, who has defended his Ph.D. dissertation on cobalt catalysts for hydrogen atom transfer to alkenes. Conner has done an outstanding combination of kinetics, mechanism, isolation/observation of sensitive compounds, and exploration of various conditions… this added up to a tour de force dissertation (and upcoming papers!). Conner is one of our brave organic chemistry team members, and we look forward to additional impact on catalysis for organic chemistry in his continuing career.

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