Group News

Perspective by Ilija published in JACS  

June 2016

Ilija has written an excellent summary of synthetic compounds relevant to the current understanding of nitrogenase. This beautiful paper is a great service to the community, as it is full of ideas for the future. Congratulations and a job well done!

Congratulations on graduations

May 2016

Congratulations to Bachelor’s graduate David Minoli, Yale class of 2016, and to Ph.D. graduates Chi Chen, Nick Arnet, and Megan Reesbeck. David kicked off a new direction for thiolate research in our lab, and did a great job. Chi revolutionized the cobalt chemistry in our lab to include new, synthetically useful catalytic reactions. Nick was the master of sulfide-hydride complexes and mechanisms, and Megan mastered new sulfide and carbene complexes. We wish them all the best in their careers!

Welcome to Amy Speelman

May 2016

A warm welcome to our newest postdoctoral coworker, Amy Speelman. Amy comes to us after a Ph.D. with Nicolai Lehnert at the University of Michigan, where she worked on sensitive NO complexes. We look forward to her upcoming research on N2 that will say YES instead of NO!

Postducks swimming away

May 2016

Congratulations to our postdoctoral associates who are moving on to permanent positions. Cory MacLeod has started a job at Chemtura, a chemical company in Connecticut, while Ilija Coric will soon start a group leader position at the University of Zürich in Switzerland. We wish you the best as you continue your excellent chemistry careers!

Pat receives Bessel Award

March 2016

Pat Holland has received a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award from the Humboldt Foundation in Germany, which is awarded on the basis of an outstanding research record. This award will support a six-month sabbatical visit to Regensburg, Germany during 2017, where he will interact closely with the research group of Prof. Manfred Scheer, an expert in the synthesis of cluster compounds. He also looks forward to taking in the local sights (and local beer) and catching up on literature reading, while keeping in close touch with the research group through videoconferences.

congrats to Sean on IC paper

March 2016

Congratulations to Sean on the publication of his paper on the variation of alkali metal cations in diiron N2 complexes! This paper in Inorg. Chem. is an important part of figuring out the way that different metals “team up” to weaken dinitrogen.

New Group Members

December 2015

We welcome new members of the Holland Group! We have been joined by first-year graduate students Dongyoung Kim and Daniel Kim, who will be pushing back the frontiers of chemistry through their Ph.D. work. In addition, junior undergraduate student Mackenzie Adelberg will be with us in spring 2016, joining David Minoli (senior) and Morgan Jackson (sophomore), who are already making important advances in their undergraduate research. We look forward to working with all of you!

Hydrosilylation paper in JACS

November 2015

Congratulations to Chi Chen, whose paper on hydrosilylation with a robust cobalt catalyst appeared as a Communication in J. Am. Chem. Soc. This really exciting system is the basis of our new NSF grant that will further develop inexpensive catalysts for important alkene transformations. Great job, Chi!

hydride-sulfide paper in JACS

November 2015

Congratulations to Nick Arnet (our group poster-boy), whose paper describing the first iron sulfide hydride complex just appeared as a Communication in J. Am. Chem. Soc, and was also highlighted in Nature Chemical Biology. This paper represents an important step in understanding the reactivity of hydrides in the FeMoco of nitrogenase, an iron sulfide cofactor. Keep up the great work, Nick!

N2 binding paper in Nature

October 2015

We are very excited about our paper on the first N2 complex of a sulfur-rich iron site, which appeared in the 1 October issue of Nature. This work is the result of a great idea by Ilija Coric, a postdoc who then brought it to fruition through a difficult series of low-temperature experiments. The new complex binds N2 by dissociating a Fe-S bond, which gives insight into the potential pathways of the nitrogenase enzyme.

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