My last three students at Illinois. Congratulations to Dr. Joel Roberts, Dr. Nafisa Ibrahim (co-advised by @jrl-electrochem.bsky.social), and Astarte Abbott. Three amazing students with a bright careers ahead!

Some of the wildest voltammograms we’ve seen! And how to avoid them (just soak!) See our recent grad Nafisa’s systematic redox copolymers - synthesis, CV, SEIRAS and bulk electrolysis tour de force - in collab with @steveczimmerman.bsky.social #chemsky #electrochem pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

You beat us to the post 🥳 An absolute pleasure to work with Nafisa over these years! Pretty soon we will share her work on redox-active polymers!

Congratulations to ZGroup and RodriguezGroup student Nafisa Ibrahim on passing her PhD defense. Super proud of this amazing scientist and wonderful person! 🥳🤩👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Please check out our Angew. communication on DNA mimic foldamers that can outcompete DNA itself in the binding of proteins! 🧬 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

The irony of my column on a promising new data on personalized mRNA-based vaccine for pancreatic cancer coming out the same day that Iowa gets closer to banning "gene-based vaccines" is not lost on me. gift link:

Whether there is another election or not may well be irrelevant. Good chance they will have firm control of the election machinery by then so the dear leader can win in a popular landslide.

An organic reaction that is both interesting and highly useful.

Here is a tentative Supramolecular Chemistry starter kit. Please let me know if you wish to be added ! #ChemSky go.bsky.app/RjRgi6n

Lots of RSC journals popping up on Bluesky (with proper domain names - well done!) including @chemicalscience.rsc.org; flagging for #Chemsky

Heartbreaking day in Israel as Shiri Bibas and her two sons Kfir and Ariel are buried in a single coffin. 😢

In our #ChemSci Pick of the Week today, Barry Carpenter argues that the "allowed" and "forbidden" classifications for electrocyclic reactions should be abandoned, based on NEVPT2 and DFT calculations. Judge the evidence for yourself #ChemSky #CompChemSky 🧪! Read it free: doi.org/10.1039/D4SC...

Great talk by Gabi Lemcoff showing how solid solution synthesis produces latent metathesis catalysts.

Exciting time in Jerusalem - my first ICS meeting.

Thanks to everyone who shared this request. We updated our new Trump Tracker blog today with the voices of some federal scientists who reached out. More to come. www.science.org/content/arti...

Clinton Bailey, Who Documented a Vanishing Bedouin Culture, Dies at 88. What an amazing life! A series of chance meetings, including Ben Gurion's wife, and a curious nature leads to the extraordinarily important task of documenting Bedouin life. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/w...

Another assault on US competitiveness at a time when biomedicine is roaring with innovation, an own-goal in a high-stakes international tournament. Of course the real losers are American people needing medicines and cures. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Black excellence: Twice as qualified, half as respected, and still passed over or labeled as a ‘DEI hire.’ Black folks have always known this because we’ve seen it happen to our own family members. I know I have.

So sad. The retreat from excellence by a private foundation signals just how much the fear of these people is driving behavior.

Only a couple years ago I learned that the structure of the alpha helix was solved by Herman Branson, a Howard professor who was doing a sabbatical with Pauling at the time, despite initial pushback from Pauling and Corey that his proposed helix model was much too tight. #BlackHistoryMonth

Oh my 2,3-dihydrofuran, I don’t know know any monomer cooler than Thee. Your cyclic vinyl ether, Makes thermosetting so much easier For me: You ROMP in the dark, Crosslink in the light, Recycle to monomer under vacuum overnight. Degrade in acid or with a lot of O2, Oh DHF this is an ode to you.

Find out what the economic impact of the NSF is in your state new.nsf.gov/about/about-...

Crying or laughing emoji just won’t work but this is definitely why I’m here for BlueSky

Physical organic chemists - is there a good (non textbook) collected series of graduate-level problems on pericyclic reactions? Looking for problems involving mechanisms, stereochemistry, and application of W-H, FMO, and Zimmerman methods.

Cousin-in-law with a beautiful home in the Hollywood hills had to evacuate yesterday. Just learned his house/neighborhood was spared. Sympathies to all who were not so lucky.

Very cool finding. Would love to see cross-cultural comparisons of human groups. Which cultures would come closest to beating the ants?

Great to meet Dr. Aoon Rizvi @aoonr.bsky.social a former undergraduate student in my group. Managed to catch-up with Aoon in my old office at UIUC. From bombing my first orgo exam to doing well in the class, talking his way into my group, UCI PhD, and Stanford PD his slope keeps rising 💫

Hi Bluesky, just in time for the holidays I am excited to share the latest pre-print from my group! We solved the 3D structure of a mysterious viral RNA that resists degradation by host nucleases. A short 🧵 &link below – please also check out the full video! #RNA #RNAbiology #RNASky #lovevirology

Admission: I often have weird and creative dreams but latest was next level. I was having lunch with my Provost who in this case apparently was a historian because she told me that she discovered that Hitler had a middle name. He was Adolf L. Hitler! No didn’t find out what L stood for.

This is an excellent piece on how to think and speak about LLMs / AI. Wide span of metaphors (and intelligence), from “role players that can imitate many different characters” to “stochastic parrots” and “autocomplete on steroids”

Great thread on the “jellyfish memory enhancement supplement” Prevagen. Always laughed at the ads where a middle aged man speaks with an exaggerated level of enunciation and deliberateness as though that reflects enhanced memory.

Someone asked me why when geese fly in a V formation one side of the V is longer. The answer is simple. The longer side of the V has one or more geese on it than does the shorter side.

Thanks for getting this in my feed. Great story.

“This breakthrough utilizes reduced atmospheric pressure allowing liquids to evaporate at low temperatures. That vapor is then condensed and collected in a receiving flask. As a result, you can capture and preserve an amazing array of even highly volatile aromas and flavors to use in your dishes...”

This is just so beautiful. We are moving into the future of angstrom scale in situ structural biology. This wonderful molecular machine - seen in all its glory here - is responsible for providing the energy that loads neurotransmitters that allow us to think.

A year ago, I published a major review on supramolecular gels. It was rejected by the journal that commissioned it, with referees saying it wasn't worth publishing, and ended up in a low-IF (<4) journal. I'm vindicated to see that in <12 months, it's been cited 35 times. pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...

Got the chance to put together the "Click of Chemical Biologists" starter pack v1 and v2 over the Thanksgiving Break. Feel free to ping me on who else I might be missing! V1: go.bsky.app/3P5i7nJ V2: go.bsky.app/Cr4ej7

Cranberry sauce does not have to have ridges… #ChemistsWhoCook

"If a woman doesn't look woman enough to a Republican, they want to be able to inspect your genitals to use a bathroom? It's disgusting. Everyone should reject it completely... they're endangering women, they're endangering girls of all kind, and everyone should reject it. It's gross." - AOC

There are two really cool #PFAS / #foreverchemicals degradation papers out in Nature today In one, the authors show that powdered Teflon can be transformed into charcoal+fluoride with light+a catalyst+reducing reagent & some very important help from mainly KOH and Cs formate This is bonkers cool:

💯 To really replace the old site Bluesky #Chemsky needs to become a lot more diverse

At least 12 of 13 so far

I haven't found a pack for Women in Science yet so I'm making one. Write if you want to be added (or removed)! Rather small ATM. #WomeninChemistry #WomeninScience #WomeninSTEM go.bsky.app/LjumNEg

Seen almost everything in my nearly 40 year career but today was a first. Sent a paper to review on which I am a coauthor. 👌🏻

Our Rector (Provost), Prof. Chaim Hames, has a very powerful message about the 7/10 massacre: www.youtube.com/watch?v=czAt...

Letter originating with Northwestern chem faculty in response to the “Open letter on NU leaders’ responses to war in Palestine and Israel” published in the Oct.16 edition of The Daily. #ChemSky dailynorthwestern.com/2023/10/27/l...

Best analysis of firing of eLife EIC is on X by @Bryce_Nickels. Eisen’s narcissism + “big mistake eLife made was not firing him years ago when it first became clear he was poorly suited … eLife deserves to be heavily criticized-- because waiting until now to fire him was a worst case scenario”

Search drinks in your camera roll.