ô MGG Group

  home | mgg cv | group | research | publications | dissertations | ucla chemistry |
  group meetings | assignments | e-library | waste tags |


Group News

Jan. 26, 2010: We are pleased to welcome new group members Amy Nielsen and Patrick Commins. Amy, a graduate of Iowa State University, is interested in synthetic methodology. She joins our group to explore solid-state synthetic strategies for green chemistry. Pat earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees from U.C. San Diego and spent one year in industry before coming to UCLA to apply his synthetic skills for the construction of molecular machines.

Jan. 11, 2010: Mike Lo filed his PhD thesis on Jan. 4. The title of his dissertation is "Preparation and Selective Derivatization of Azide-Terminated Self-Assembled Monolayers on Native Silicon." Mike is now considering job offers. Congratulations, Dr. Lo!

Oct. 9, 2009: Group students Jeff Buenaflor and Blanca Hernandez returned from their summer internships. Jeff, a UC LEADS fellow, spent his summer at UC Berkeley working in the lab of Prof. Richmond Sarpong with grad student Jenna Jeffrey. Jeff worked on an enediyne cyclization for the synthesis of dimeric resveratrol derivatives. Blanca worked with Jasmine Hunt and Katie Feldman in the group of Prof. Craig Hawker at UC Santa Barbara. She joined their group as a RISE fellow, making hydrogels with ABA acrylic acid-PEG triblocks copolymers (with anionic end blocks and a neutral, hydrophilic middle block) and cationic DMAEMA homopolymer. Welcome back, Jeff and Blanca!

June 10, 2009: Cortnie Vogelsberg and Greg Kuzmanich (pictured below) returned from their respective three-month MCTP internships at the universities of Milano and Erlangen. Cortnie did research on structured silicates in the group of Prof. Piero Sozzani, while Greg worked in the group of Prof. Dirk Guldi doing various pump-probe experiments. Welcome back, guys!
Feb. 21, 2009: Photo gallery of group events updated.

Research Highlights
Jan. 4, 2010: Our collaborative research on the direct detection of nanocrystalline radical pairs with the groups of Prof. Malcolm Forbes and Dr. Valery Tarasov published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society has been highlighted by Chemical and Engineering News.

Nov. 2, 2009: Greg Kuzmanich was awarded the John Stauffer Award for Excellence in Research at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Awards Ceremony. Congratulations, Greg!

Oct. 14, 2009: It was just announced that former group member Marcia Levitus (pictured below), now a professor at Arizona State University, is the winner of the 2010 Young Investigator Award of the Inter-American Photochemical Society. An excerpt from the award citation: "Prof. Levitus has established a leading research program in the area of biomolecular dynamics, using ultrasensitive fluorescence techniques to probe the biological implications of structural fluctuations in nucleosomes as well as to characterize the impact of covalent attachment on the fluorescent properties of dyes often used to label biomolecules." Congratulations to Marcia!

May 27, 2009: Computational predictions by Luis Campos, a synthetic method developed by Marino Resendiz, and remarkable analytical procedure developed by Farnosh Family are among the ingredients used in a recent Journal of the American Chemical Society article describing the first example of a radical pair reaction that occurs with a double memory of chirality.

April 20, 2009: The MGG group's P3 team, composed of Farnosh Family, Saori Shiraki and Greg Kuzmanich, received honorable mention for their design and proposal on eco-friendly, solvent-free synthesis of natural products at the Environmental Protection Agency's 2009 P3: People, Prosperity and the Planet Student Design Competition for Sustainability. Farnosh (pictured) presented the group's work in a poster at the competition, which took place in Washington, D.C., April 18-20, to coincide with Earth Day. Read their project abstract, and learn more about the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry and the American Chemical Society's Green Chemistry Institute.

Click here for older news.


Research

Solid state organic chemistry: Structure-reactivity correlations; supramolecular organic photochemistry and absolute asymmetric synthesis; chemical dynamics in organic crystals; X-ray diffraction and solid state NMR; crystal engineering and organic materials science.

Contact

University of California, Los Angeles
Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry
607 Charles E. Young Drive East
Los Angeles, CA 90095
mgg@chem.ucla.edu

Office:
Molecular Sciences Building, Room 4505-C
Phone: 310-825-3159

Labs:
MSB 4240, MSB 4241, MSB 4235, MSB 4210

Links:
California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI)
Materials Creation Training Program (MCTP)
Organization for Cultural Diversity in Chemistry
ICCOSS XVII (2005, UCLA)