Group News

Double trouble with sulfides

June 2019

Two excellent papers on Dan DeRosha’s work with new iron-sulfide clusters are now coming out in the literature. One (in Inorganic Chemistry) describes a new two-iron cluster that serves as a precursor to a variety of cluster shapes, including an unusual 10-iron cluster. The other (in Nature Chemistry) gives details on one of the product cluster types, which has a flat 4-iron shape that is new in iron chemistry. This unusual shape leads the central Fe site to have only three bonds but have a low-spin electronic configuration, which defies simple expectations but can be understood using spectroscopic and computational contributions from our collaborators Serena DeBeer, Frank Neese, and Eckhard Bill. This cluster is also capable of breaking N-N bonds in hydrazine, which mimics one activity of nitrogenase. A real tour de force!

DeRosha wins Wolfgang Prize

May 2019

Congratulations to Dan DeRosha, whose recently accepted Ph.D. thesis earned him a Wolfgang Prize that is awarded to the top Ph.D. theses for the chemistry department each year. This is a huge and well-deserved honor for Dan. Great work, Dan!

New papers are out

May 2019

Congratulations to DK on the appearance of his new paper on the mechanisms of alkene cross-coupling reactions, which was published in J. Am. Chem. Soc. This paper was a substantial achievement that was the fruit of a lot of careful thinking and experimentation, combined with computations by our collaborator Rinaldo Poli from Toulouse, France. In addition, Sam’s Minireview of N-N bond splitting chemistry appeared in Eur. J. Inorg. Chem. Great job, Sam!

Congratulations to Dr. Sean McWilliams!

March 2019

Congratulations to Sean McWilliams, who defended his Ph.D. thesis. Sean has been an amazing leader and contributor to the group and department, and we thank him for his years of dedication and fun in the group. Sean will be continuing his academic training this summer in the group of Jillian Dempsey at UNC. We wish Sean the best!

NIH grant funded

February 2019

Our NIH grant proposal on Fe-catalyzed HAT (hydrogen atom transfer) alkene reactions was funded by the NIH. Congratulations to DK, Conner, and Josef, whose hard work and careful editing made the grant proposal great. Onward and upward!

Congratulations to Dr. Dan DeRosha!

January 2019

Congratulations to Dan on the completion of his PhD! Dan has accomplished a wide range of iron and cobalt chemistry in his time with us, and has become one of our most valuable players. Dan will be continuing his academic journey in a postdoctoral position with Jonathan Owen at Columbia later this spring. Great job and best wishes, Dan!

Welcome to new group members

December 2018

Welcome to the three graduate students who have just joined the Holland Group! We are excited to start working with Jessica Armstrong, Reagan Hooper, and Ken Xie in the coming years.

new papers from Sean and Dan

December 2018

Congratulations to Sean McWilliams on his paper in Chemical Communications, which describes an interesting mixed-valence N2 complex of iron and its spectroscopy and magnetism. We also celebrated the appearance of a paper in Chemical Science describing the culmination of many years of work on CO2 activation by a low-coordinate cobalt system. This was started by Malik Al-Afyouni at Rochester, had a lot of computational input from Lisa Roy from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion, and was brought to fruition by Dan DeRosha. Thanks to all!

N2 talk is online

October 2018

This past summer, Pat had the opportunity to give an overview of the group’s research on nitrogen activation at the 2018 Blavatnik Science Symposium. A recording of his talk is online at this web page.

Outstanding outreach

September 2018

Congratulations to our outreach team, which is led by Gannon Connor and includes grad students Daniel Kim and Allie Nagelski, and undergraduate students Megan Quimby, Sara Tridenti, Jack Atwater, Tori Hass-Mitchell, and Seungjung Sohn. They have done a lot of development and execution of activities involving gas chromatography for high-school students (at Common Ground High School and in the Pathways to Science programs), showing the students how chemists quantitatively analyze chemicals and sharing the fun of sustainable chemistry. During the Pathways Summer Scholars program, they got the highest rating of any activity, which is appropriate recognition for the careful and thoughtful development that they have accomplished collaboratively. Great job!!!

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