Our ten-year-long battle with a really weird iron-hydride complex has finally come to fruition, with a paper appearing in Chemical Science. In order to sort out its dynamic behavior, Sean McWilliams performed neutron crystallography, lots of variable-temperature Mössbauer, and other studies, while our collaborators Eckhard Bill and Shengfa Ye contributed magnetic and computational analysis, respectively. And a huge amount of the insight into the crystal twinning that underlies the behavior came from Brandon Mercado, who we are so lucky to have here at Yale as a crystallographic collaborator.

A key driver behind our ultimate understanding was Eckhard, who tragically passed away just after the paper was submitted in the fall. This paper is a testament to his deep insight and fearless inquisitive spirit. We are really proud of this paper, which was recognized as a “Pick of the Week” by Chem. Sci.

Congratulations to Alec Hegg, whose first paper from the group has now appeared in Faraday Discussions. It describes our first foray into molybdenum chemistry, and he developed a porphyrin-supported molybdenum nitride that is capable of catalytically reducing N₂ to ammonia. This is part of our ongoing collaboration with Alex Miller and Alan Goldman, where Alec is also playing an important leadership role on outreach (described at NitrogenFixers.org). Great stuff, Alec!

A hearty congratulations to Sam Bhutto, who completed his thesis this month. Sam has been our resident expert on C-N coupling and has contributed to the group culture and research in innumerable ways. We are super proud of Sam, and his positive attitude, knowledge, and hard work will continue to serve him well in his postdoctoral research with Louise Berben at UC Davis.

A huge congratulations to Jeremy Weber, who was an amazing group member for the past five years. Jeremy’s mentoring and team-minded spirit, as well as his deep thinking about nitrogen activation pathways, has been inspirational. Jeremy is moving on to a position at L3 Harris, and we look forward to his future successes. Great job, Jeremy!