Group News
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.
Click
here for
older
news.
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Research Highlights
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 JACS 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.
Feb. 3, 2009: Research by recent grad student Hung Dang published in Organic and
Biomolecular Chemistry shows that it
is
possible to generate polar oxonium ylide intermediates within neutral crystals. The scope of
reactions in crystalline solids keeps increasing.
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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.
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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)
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