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Seminar Programs

• Professors Lippard and Tannenbaum elected to the distinguised 2011 class of Fellows of the American Chemical Society.
• Professors Fu, Field, Nelson, and Jamison, awarded 2012 American Chemical Society National Awards.

• Swager Lab: Claisen Rearrangement of Graphite Oxide: A Route to Covalently Functionalized Graphenes
• Drs. Omar K. Ahmad and Stephen P. Lathrop of the Movassaghi group have developed an efficient and convergent strategy for the directed and stereocontrolled assembly of carbon–carbon linked heterodimeric hexahydropyrroloindoles.
• Justin Kim of the Movassaghi group has reported the concise and enantioselective total syntheses of (+)-naseseazines A and B.

• Vaccines that target newly identified viral protein sequences could be more effective than previous efforts.
• Sunkyu Han in the Movassaghi group has completed the first total syntheses of (–)-trigonoliimines A, B, and C.
• Drennan Lab: Crystallographic snapshots of a mononuclear iron protein suggest how one enzyme can react with both R- and S- enantiomers of its substrate, yielding different products.With the S- enantiomer, hydroxypropylphosphonic acid epoxidase (HppE) generates the epoxide containing antibiotic fosfomycin.
• Dincă Lab: Reductive Electrosynthesis of Crystalline Metal–Organic Frameworks

• Slideshow of the 2011 Hooding Reception
• Nocera Lab: Light-induced water oxidation at silicon electrodes functionalized with a cobalt oxygen-evolving catalyst
• Brian Walker, August Dorn, and Professor Moungi Bawendi--in collaboration with Professor Vladimir Bulovic in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science--have reported the fabrication of composite photodetectors consisting of J-aggregates conjugated to semiconductor nanowires in Nano Letters.
• Professors Ting and Nolan appointed to chairs.
• Professor Mircea Dincă has been selected by the Department of Energy Office of Science to receive a FY2011 Early Career Research Program Award.

• For revolutionizing NMR spectroscopy, Professor Emeritus John S. Waugh has been selected to receive the 2011 Welch Award in Chemistry.
• Stubbe honored wth Killian Award.
• Lippard Lab: Mechanistic Studies of Reactions of Peroxodiiron(III) Intermediates in T201 Variants of Toluene o-Xylene Monooxygenase Hydroxylase

• Professor Elizabeth Nolan has been selected as a 2011 Searle Scholar.
• The Department of Chemistry hosted several events at the Institute-wide Open House Day on April 30, 2011.
• Schrock Lab: Stereoselective Synthesis of Z-Disubstituted Olefins through Catalytic Cross-Metathesis Reactions

• Drennan Lab: Structural basis for the inhibition of human alkyladenine DNA glycosylase (AAG) by 3,N⁴-ethenocytosine containing DNA
• Dow announces multiyear collaboration with MIT for innovative educational outreach.
• Johnson and Pentelute join the department as Assistant Professors.

• Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, former Dean of Science, and Member of the National Academy of Science, Robert A. Alberty, has published his scientific autobiography in a special issue in his honor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry B.
• Professor Jianshu Cao has been promoted to Full Professor effective July 1, 2011.
• Weslee Glenn, O’Connor Group, has received a Martin Luther King Award for his role along with Professor Cathy Drennan and Dr. Elizabeth Vogel-Taylor in creating an interactive workshop to combat stereotype threat at MIT.
• Jamison Lab: Evidence That Epoxide-Opening Cascades Promoted by Water Are Stepwise and Become Faster and More Selective After the First Cyclization

• Ting Lab: Imaging LDL receptor oligomerization during endocytosis using a co-internalization assay
• Professor Dietmar Seyferth’s academic autobiography entitled “Looking Back on Happy Years in Chemistry” has been published in a special issue of Organometallics, November 8, 2010, Volume 29, Number 21.

• Cady Coleman '83 to spend five months at the ISS
• On the trail of aflatoxin Toxicologist Gerald Wogan has dedicated his career to understanding — and fighting — a deadly carcinogen.
• Lippard Lab: Characterization of Iron Dinitrosyl Species Formed in the Reaction of Nitric Oxide with a Biological Rieske Center

• Professor Sarah O’Connor, right, and graduate student Weerawat Runguphan have engineered periwinkle root cells that can produce variations of compounds that the plant normally synthesizes.
• The Danheiser Lab has reported several new [2 + 2 + 2] cycloaddition strategies for the synthesis of carbocyclic and heterocyclic organic compounds.
• Cao Lab: A new analysis by MIT researchers could make it possible to design more efficient artificial systems that mimic the way plants harvest the energy of sunlight through photosynthesis

• Professor Elizabeth M. Nolan has been awarded an NIH Innovator Award.
• Justin Kim of the Movassaghi group has developed a highly stereoselective and systematic strategy for the introduction of polysulfides in the synthesis of epipolythiodiketopiperazines.
• In collaboration with the Bulovic group in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Moungi Bawendi and Brian Walker have developed a new method to deposit J-aggregates and colloidal quantum dots together in a solid state thin film.
• By creating a better way to see molecules at work in living brain cells, researchers affiliated with MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the MIT Department of Chemistry (Ting Lab) are helping elucidate molecular mechanisms of synapse formation.

• Professor Sarah O'Connor, Associate Professor of Chemistry, has received the 2011 Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry.
• Phosphorus, a mineral element found in rocks and bone, is a critical ingredient in fertilizers, pesticides, detergents and other industrial and household chemicals.
• The lab of Prof. Amy Rosenzweig (MIT Ph.D. 1994 from the Lippard group), in collaboration with the Stubbe lab, has crystallized a protein-protein complex essential for assembly of a dimanganese(III)-tyrosyl radical (Y•) cofactor in the class Ib ribonucleotide reductase (RNR) from E. coli.

• A new report from the Cummins lab describes the finding that phosphines can be synthesized by completely breaking down the tetrahedral molecule P4 using organic radicals, according to 0.25 P4 + 3 R → PR3.1
• On Monday, August 23, 2010, the Department held a reception for alumni and faculty in conjunction with the 2010 ACS Meeting in Boston.
• Deep in the ocean, sponges of the Agelas family, or bacteria living within the sponges, emit chemicals believed to help them defend their territory.

• Bawendi Lab: Development of a Bioorthogonal and Highly Efficient Conjugation Method for Quantum Dots Using Tetrazine−Norbornene Cycloaddition
• Slideshow of MIT Department of Chemistry Hooding 2010
• Buchwald Lab: The Palladium-Catalyzed Trifluoromethylation of Aryl Chlorides

• Professor Sylvia Ceyer has agreed to serve as the Head of the Department of Chemistry for a five year term commencing July 1, 2010.
• Professor Mo Movassaghi (right) and Professor Troy Van Voorhis (left) have been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure effective July 1, 2010.
• This year’s Welch Award recipients, Professor JoAnne Stubbe, Novartis Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Biology at MIT, and Professor Christopher T. Walsh
• Professor Catherine L. Drennan is one of only 13 faculty members from around the nation to be named as HHMI Professors in the 2010 round of awards.
• Chakraborty Lab: Nature advance online publication 5 May 2010 doi:10.1038/nature08997
• Ting Lab: MIT chemists have designed a way to fluorescently label proteins that could shed light on protein functions never before seen.

• Professor Barbara Imperiali has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
• Michael S. Feld, Professor of Physics and Director of the George R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory, (1940-2010)
• Professors Stephen J. Lippard and Daniel G. Nocera receive honorary doctorates of science.

• Chemistry major, Alex T. Vai, has received a prestigious 2010 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship.
• O'Connor Lab: A Role for Old Yellow Enzyme in Ergot Alkaloid Biosynthesis

• Cummins Lab: Ligand-Based Reduction of CO2to CO Mediated by an Anionic Niobium Nitride Complex

• The International Society of Magnetic Resonance (ISMAR) has announced that it has awarded its triennial 2010 Prize to Professor Robert G. Griffin.
• Griffin Lab: High-Resolution Solid-State NMR Structure of a 17.6 kDa Protein
• Stubbe Lab: An active dimanganese(III)-tyrosyl radical cofactor in Escherichia coli class Ib ribonucleotide reductase

• Professor Stephen L. Buchwald receives 2010 Gustavus J. Esselen Award for Chemistry in the Public Interest
• Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, Jeffrey I. Steinfeld is one of eight professors from MIT named as American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) fellows.

• Professor Stephen J. Lippard and Dr. Shanta Dhar, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Lippard Lab have developed a new platinum compound that is as powerful as the commonly used anticancer drug cisplatin but better able to destroy tumor cells.
• Optimization of Exciton Trapping in Energy Transfer Processes J. Cao and R. J. Silbey JPC A, 113, p13826 (2009) [feature article]
• Professor Stephen L. Buchwald and Professor Gregory C. Fu have been determined to be, in data provided by Thomson Reuters from its Essential Science Indicators, January 1999-2009, two of the ten most cited researchers in chemistry.

• Professor JoAnne Stubbe receives 2010 Franklin Medal
• Schrock Lab: Highly Z-Selective Metathesis Homocoupling of Terminal Olefins
• Nelson Lab: Three-dimensional visible spectroscopy
• Professor Alice Y. Ting receives 2010 Eli Lilly Award
• Swager Lab: Radiation Detection: Resistivity Responses in Functional Poly(Olefin Sulfone)/ Carbon Nanotube Composites

• Department mourns loss of graduate student: Peter Curtin
• The NOBCChE NE Regional Meeting is being hosted by the MIT Departments of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering on Friday, October 23 and Saturday, October 24.
• Professor JoAnne Stubbe wins National Medal of Science
• The Department of Chemistry is very pleased to host Professor John Harkless, Martin Luther King Visiting Professor, for the 2009-2010 academic year.

• Four Chemistry Department professors have been selected to receive 2010 American Chemical Society National Awards: Lippard, Bawendi, Ting and Movassaghi.

• O'Connor Lab: Silencing of tryptamine biosynthesis for production of non-natural alkaloids in plant culture
• The Buchwald Group has devised a new way to add fluorine to a variety of compounds used in many drugs and agricultural chemicals, an advance that could offer more flexibility and potential cost-savings in designing new drugs.
  

• Meiliana Tjandra and Dr. Jun Qi in the Movassaghi group have completed the first total synthesis of (–)-himandrine.
• Emeritus Professor, Dietmar Seyferth, elected to the 2009 inaugural class of Fellows of the American Chemical Society.
  

• Two recent chemistry undergraduates, Koyel Bhattacharyya and Amanda Shing, have received Fullbright scholarships to study abroad.
• Congratulations Graduate Students
• Congratulations Seniors
• Professor Alice Y. Ting is promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure

• Junior, Sid Creutz, receives Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship
• Professor Stephen J. Lippard receives the Pauling Medal
• Senior, Annelise Beck, has been awarded the Association of MIT Alumnae (AMITA) Senior Academic Award
• Professor Daniel G. Nocera, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
• Professor made Time Magazine's 100
• Georgily Teverovskiy, a graduate student in the Buchwald Group has been selected for a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship.
• Marcus Gibson, a graduate student in the Drennan Group, has been selected for a National Science Foundation fellowship.
• Graduate student, Darcy Wanger (Bawendi Group) has been selected to receive a Hertz Fellowship funded by the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation.

• Three Junior Faculty join the Department.
• Professor Mohammad Movassaghi receives 2009 Bristol-Myers Squibb Unrestricted Grant in Synthetic Organic Chemistry.
• Justin Kim and Dr. James A. Ashenhurst of the Movassaghi group report (Science 2009, 324, 238-241) a concise enantioselective total synthesis of (+)-11,11'-dideoxyverticillin A via a strategy inspired by their biosynthetic hypothesis for this alkaloid.
  

• Cummins Lab: Facile Synthesis of AsP3
  Cossairt B.M., Diawara M.C., and Cummins C.C., Science, 2009, 323, 602.
• Professor Mohammad Movassaghi has been selected to receive the Hofflmann-La Roche Inc. (Roche) 2009 Excellence in Chemistry Award.

• The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology has selected Professor JoAnne Stubbe, Novartis Professor of Chemistry and Professor Biology as its 2009 recipient of the Prelog Medal.

• Nature Chemical Biology reports that MIT Chemistry graduate student Weerawat Runguphan, Professor Sarah E. O'Connor, Latham Family Career Development Associate Professor of Chemistry and MIT chemistry graduate student Peter Bernhardt, have transformed an alkaloid biosynthetic gene with reengineered substrate specificity into Catharanthus roseus.

• Professor Timothy M. Swager, John D. MacArthur Professor and Head of the Department of Chemistry has been selected to receive the 2008 John Scott Award.
• Joseph S. Francisco, Ph. D. '83 and William E. Moore, Distinguished Professor at Purdue University, has been selected as the ACS President-Elect for 2009.
• MIT Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and NOBCChE (The National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers) are pleased to announce the establishment of a Technology Education Partnership (TEP). This Partnership will help increase opportunities for minority undergraduate and graduate students in each department as we work collaboratively with the NOBCChE Organization to promote our mutual educational goals.
• Two-Electron Reduction of a Vanadium(V) Nitride by CO to Release Cyanate and Open a Coordination Site Jared S. Silvia and Christopher C. Cummins*.

• Professor Richard R. Schrock: Highly efficient molybdenum-based catalysts for enantioselective alkene metathesis.

• Griffin Group: In Situ Temperature-Jump Dynamic Nuclear Polarization: Enhanced Sensitivity in Two Dimensional 13C−13C Correlation Spectroscopy in Solution.
• Lippard Group: Targeted delivery of cisplatin to prostate cancer cells by aptamer functionalized Pt(IV) prodrug-PLGA–PEGnanoparticles.

• Omar K. Ahmad of the Movassaghi group reports the first example of a stereospecific transition metal-catalyzed conversion of allylic electrophiles to the corresponding monoalkyl diazene intermediates.
• Alice Y. Ting, the Pfizer-Laubach Career Development Associate Professor of Chemistry, has been selected to receive a 2008 NIH Pioneer Award.
• The Executive Board of the American Physical Society has awarded Robert W. Field, Haslam and Dewey Professor of Chemistry, the 2009 Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science, endowed by the NEC Corporation.

• ACS 2009 NATIONAL AWARD WINNERS: Three Chemistry Department Professors, namely Mohammad Movassaghi, Daniel G. Nocera and JoAnne Stubbe, have been selected as recipients of awards administered by the American Chemical Society for 2009.
• Professor Moungi G. Bawendi, Lester Wolfe Professor in Chemistry, recalls his 18 years of teaching which incudes freshmen general chemistry course 5.112 (Principles of Chemical Science), among other courses.
• Professor Richard R. Schrock, a Nobel laureate and the Frederick G. Keyes Professor of Chemistry has been working on the problem for nearly 30 years. In 2003, he reported the first and only catalytic productions of ammonia from nitrogen gas, using the metal molybdenum as a catalyst.

• Daniel G. Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy and Professor of Chemistry has developed a simple method to split water molecules and produce oxygen gas, a discovery that paves the way for large-scale use of solar power.
• Cummins Lab: Cleavage of the N≡N bond of dinitrogen, to form two metal nitrogen triple-bonded complexes, at ambient temperature was first reported by Laplaza & Cummins in 1995.
• Lippard Lab: A compound that accumulates in cells more readily than a commonly used colorectal cancer drug may be just as useful in treating colorectal tumors.

• The Ting Lab has designed a new type of probe.
• Hooding 2008 - Images.

• Professor Catherine L. Drennan is selected as HHMI Investigator.
• Professor Stephen L. Buchwald and Timothy M. Swager elected to the National Academy of Science.
• Professor Richard R. Schrock elected to Royal Society (London).
• Professor Sylvia T. Ceyer receives The Arthur C. Smith Award.
• Graduate Student, Christian Schubert, presented with 2008 Goodwin Medal.

• Professor Steven R. Tannenbaum, Professor of Chemistry and Underwood-Prescott Professor of Toxicology, Biological Engineering Division, is the recipient of the Second AACR-CICR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Chemistry in Cancer Research.
• Professor Christopher C. Cummins is elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
• Professor Daniel G. Nocera will direct the Solar Revolution Project (SRP).
• The Board of Directors of the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation has awarded the Camille Dreyfus-Teacher Scholar Award to Professor Mohammad Movassaghi.

• Movassaghi selected for 2008 Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship.
• The Ting Lab is interested in developing new site-specific reactions for protein labeling, using enzymes that recognize an acceptor sequence with exquisite specificity but that can utilize unnatural probes with useful bioorthogonal functional groups for labeling, such as azides and alkynes.
• Annelise Beck '09 has been awarded a 2008 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship.

• Stubbe receives National Academy of Sciences Award in Chemical Sciences.
• New Mechanism for Energy Flow in Polyatomic Molecule.
• Lippard Lab images show macrophages infected with anthrax.