Group News

Sean McWilliams wins DIC Young Investigator Award

April 2020

Our recent graduate Sean McWilliams is the recipient of a prestigious Young Investigator Awards from the Division of Inorganic Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. These are given each year to the eight top inorganic chemistry Ph.D.s in the whole country. The journal Inorganic Chemistry recently described Sean and the other recipients in this article. Congrats to Sean!

NSF grant funded

April 2020

Congrats to Team Rhenium (Gannon and Jeremy) upon the renewal of our NSF grant on N2 splitting and ammonia formation. This is an awesome collaboration with Jim Mayer and Bob Crabtree at Yale, as well as Alex Miller at UNC and Alan Goldman at Rutgers. We’re looking for continued success and additional co-workers!

Honorable Mention to Jessica Armstrong

March 2020

Congratulations to Jessica Armstrong, who received an Honorable Mention from the National Science Foundation for her application for a graduate fellowship.

Congrats to Ken Xie upon his Master's

January 2020

Congratulations on Ken on completion of his Master’s degree in the group. He distinguished himself as a thoughtful lab safety officer and contributor to the group. Ken will be continuing his chemistry career as a teacher in his home country of China. We wish him the best in the future!

Welcome to Savannah and Junwen

January 2020

A hearty welcome to graduate students Savannah Mason and Junwen Xiao, who have joined the group for their Ph.D. research. Savannah will be working on our project on H-atom transfer initiated alkene functionalization, and Junwen will be working on forming C-N bonds from dinitrogen at iron catalysts.

Sam wins teaching award  

November 2019

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Congratulations to Sam Bhutto, who is the recipient of a 2019 Prize Teaching Fellowship. This is a University-level award that recognizes our best teachers, and Sam earned it through outstanding work as a Teaching Fellow in Chem 226L (Intensive Advanced Chemistry Lab). Great job, Sam!

Welcome to Majed!  

August 2019

We are happy to welcome Majed Fataftah to the Holland Group! Majed just completed his Ph.D. with Danna Freedman at Northwestern University, and we are looking forward to his upcoming work on iron-nitrogen research here at Yale.

 

New grant from DOE

July 2019

We are gratified that the U.S. Department of Energy has chosen to fund our project “Tandem Catalytic C-H Activation and N2 Activation Using Iron Complexes.” This grant, starting Sept. 1, will support Sam’s continued work on a project started by Sean and Danny, which uses atmospheric N2 to form organic compounds. Onward and upward!

Loads of summer students

July 2019

We are pleased to be hosting a number of research visitors this summer. We have four rising Yale sophomores, Alex Saczawa, David Gallagher, Peter Cappaert, and Will Wang. In addition, Anna Conley is visiting from Carleton College. Finally, Dan DiPrimio is continuing his undergraduate research with us with support from a Rosenfeld Science Scholarship. It is fun working with all of them!

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!

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