Congratulations to Professor Lillian Chong, named the Graduate & Postdoc Alum of the year! This award recognizes an alum who has made outstanding contributions to science, research, society/community, or academia. Read more using this link zurl.co/YOUra

Distinguished Professor Sanford Asher sadly passed away on January 16th, 2026. We send our condolences to the Faculty, Students and staff that knew and worked with him. He will be missed by many people! Read more about Prof. Asher's life and work using this link zurl.co/zPz2F

2026 PITT CHEM REU application are now OPEN! Find the link to our application through our NEW website > zurl.co/REU (zurl.co/QduRT) Reach out to [email protected] if you have any questions

Congratulations to Lillian Chong, Angela Gronenborn, and their joint graduate student, Darian Yang, for receiving a 2025 HPCwire Editors Choice Award for Best Use of HPC in Life Sciences. zurl.co/XDB9v Read the publication here > zurl.co/OUdzG

Congratulations to Aravind Vadakkayil for receiving the Mellon Fellowship this year. Aravind is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Waldeck group whose research explores how control over the electron spin during catalysis facilitates chemical reactions.

Congrats to Dyllan Amin for receiving the Chancellor's Undergraduate Teaching Fellowship. The fellowship supports students doing a collaborative teaching project with a faculty member. Amin will be working with Dr. Ward to make videos for the Gen chem 2 labs.

Congrats to Alexander Star and Amir Amiri whose work was recently highlighted in Pittwire. This research introduces a rapid platform for monitoring vaccine-induced antibody levels using carbon nanotube–based field-effect transistors. Read about it here: zurl.co/WGrNM

Pitt Chem hosted its annual Safety Fair this week, reminding us that safety is always a priority. Attendees explored hands-on safety stations on the second-floor balcony and heard an insightful keynote from Dr. Adam Powell of PPG.

Grace Kenney received a New Investigator Grant from the Charles E. Kaufman Foundation for research on “An Unappreciated Yet Widespread Route to the Biosynthesis of Peptidic Natural Products.”

Last Friday, the Department of Chemistry celebrated its 150th anniversary! People filled chevron to watch Ray Euler do live demos, David Waldeck talk about the history of the department, and to attend a poster session. Thank you to everyone who came to celebrate with us.

Congratulations to Alysia Mandato (Ph.D 2025) for receiving the Pittsburgh Section of the American Chemical Society Distinguished Service Award. The award recognizes outstanding volunteer service to the local ACS section.

Professor Nathaniel Rosi has received the Pittsburgh Award from the Pittsburgh Section of the American Chemical Society, which recognizes distinguished service to the field of chemistry. Read about him and his work here: zurl.co/PDITj

Professor Alexander Deiters wins 2026 ACS Cope Scholar Award. Read more about the award and Alexander Deiters here: zurl.co/gKR2p

Congrats to Elizabeth Shiby of the Waldeck group for recieving a PQI fellowship. Her explores structure and chiral-induced spin selectivity property relationships to identify the important features necessary for developing a more comprehensive understanding of this phenomenon.

Congrats to Ann Marie Paterno from the Millstone group for receiving the PQI Fellowship. She researches how molecular interactions and reaction conditions influence nanoparticle outcomes, adopting a photocatalytic approach to characterize intermediate species as they evolve.

Congratulations to our 2025 Safford Award recipients.  A luncheon was held on August 7, 2025, to honor these amazing graduate teaching assistants at the University of Pittsburgh – Department of Chemistry.  Thank you for making such a difference in our student’s education.

Grace Fleury (‘24) is an alum of the Floreancig group and current NSF GRFP fellow at Princeton University. Read more about her time at Pitt and what she’s been up to since graduating here: zurl.co/NZsjg

In this paper from JPCB, the Saxena group establishes Q‑band double‑quantum coherence ESR as a method for measuring distances between nitroxide spin labels in proteins at physiologically relevant concentrations. Read more: zurl.co/pXRCx”

The Wipf group and collaborators studied the antitumor efficacy of 1,2,4‑triazole VCP/p97 allosteric inhibitors which showed low-nanomolar potency in mouse models. Read more in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry: zurl.co/RpGf4

Baily Ford, a member of the Chong group, researches algorithms to sample the conformational space of biomolecules. Read more about his research and his experiences at Pitt here: zurl.co/TS7Bb

The Rosi group and collaborators studied the differences in iodine adsorption in Zn(II) and Co(II)-based metal-organic frameworks. Read more here: zurl.co/b8g4m

Recently, the Saxena group developed a rigid, nucleotide-independent Cu(II)-based spin label that enables precise measurement of DNA conformation and flexibility using EPR spectroscopy. Read more in JACS: zurl.co/QFmBZ

Using electronic structure calculations, the Jordan group characterized low energy isomers of different classes of the H+(H20)21 cluster. Read more in the Journal of Physical Chemistry A: zurl.co/ITTVP

The Wang group has a new review paper out on advancements in regio- and stereoselective synthesis of enantioenriched propargylic and allenic derivatives of silicon, germanium, and tin. Read more in Chemistry – An Asian Journal: zurl.co/fjLhF

Congratulations to the Transue Lab on their first Journal of the American Chemical Society Publication! Read the publication here: zurl.co/y1zJC and read more about the Transue Lab and their work here: zurl.co/vRbaM

Congratulations to Dominic Brazzle, who just received The Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh's College Chemistry Award. Read more about Dominic, and the work is his doing here: zurl.co/xxZ0u

Peng Liu’s group worked with researchers from UW Madison to investigate silver catalysts and their non-covalent interactions in asymmetric C‒H amidation reactions. Read more in Chem Catalysis: zurl.co/cQGo8

This month in Science, Peng Liu’s group and collaborators at UCSF and UCSB designed proteins with histidine-ligated porphyrin and heme ligands which have the potential to become ecofriendly catalysts. Read more: zurl.co/DPkXC

Check out this new paper from the Rosi and Waldeck groups in ACS Nano on investigating the magnetic properties of the chiral-induced spin selectivity effect using atomic force: zurl.co/GaYBD

Christian Knox, a graduate student in the Peng Liu group, has been selected by the DOE Office of Science Graduate Student Research Program to conduct on-site research at the Brookhaven national laboratory. Read more about the work he will be doing here: zurl.co/t6M2f

Peng Liu’s group collaborated with researchers from Emory to investigate how HFIP influences the enantioselectivity of cyclopropanation reactions catalyzed by chiral dirhodium tetracarboxylates. Read more in the Journal of the American Chemical Society: zurl.co/o0JBu

In this piece in Bioanalysis, Stephanie Rankin-Turner outlines the advantages – and challenges - of adopting ambient mass spectrometry in bioanalytic laboratories: zurl.co/vpyOL

Check out David Waldeck's new collaborative paper investigating photon emission from trivalent lanthanide cations and selecting dopants for the next generation of LEDs and other optoelectronic devices. Read more in Accounts of Chemical Research: zurl.co/jaBsh

Meet Marcus Van Engen a fifth-year PhD student in the Floreancig lab who is working on the total synthesis of antibiotic Neomycin B. Read more about Marcus: zurl.co/WwusB

This month in JACS, Peng Liu and collaborators at UCSB report that P450 variants produced by directed evolution enable catalytic enantioselective Smiles rearrangements. Read more: zurl.co/0XmYp

Congratulations to Peng Liu on getting another paper in Nature! In collaboration with Gregory Fu from the California Institute of Technology, they propose a catalytic method to convert racemic mixtures of alkyl halides into a single enantiomer. Read more: zurl.co/iEL6Q

This week, we’re highlighting Zoe Soilis, a 5th year student in Nat Rosi’s lab who is researching the photophysical properties of MOFs. Read more about Zoe’s research and her experience at Pitt at zurl.co/ajUAj

Congratulations Joglekar & Deiters Lab on NIH R21 Grant! Read more about their work on the chemistry website: zurl.co/qFZLb

Congratulations to the recipients of our department's inaugural best paper awards! This round of awards recognizes outstanding papers published in Summer 2024. Read about their work at the links below: zurl.co/0sufX

Seth Horne and collaborators from Oxford and Notre Dame investigated the stabilization of a miniprotein with an unsaturated analogue of proline featuring a planar dehydropyrazine ring. Read more in Communications Chemistry: zurl.co/OC7sp

A new paper in the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation from the Chong group discusses a new method of weighted ensemble path sampling using unsupervised learning to determine an optimal progress coordinate. Read more: zurl.co/qCtqq

Peng Liu and collaborators investigate a mechanism for cross-coupling aryl halides using formate as a mediator. This method offers opportunities for efficient syntheses using green reductants under mild conditions. Read more in Nature Chemistry: zurl.co/0wVbz

Recently, the Deiters Group developed specialized peptides to target one of HPV’s cancer-causing proteins. These peptides have enhanced stability and binding affinity which inhibit the function of the protein. Read more in ACS Chemical Biology: zurl.co/XrK9z

Future scholars, future colleagues, future friends. Some pictures from our recent prospective graduate student weekends.

Yesterday was our undergraduate award ceremony. This annual ceremony celebrates undergraduate success and achievement. Congratulations to all of the recipients for your outstanding work.

Siao-Han (Phoebe) Huang just finished her PhD in the Amemiya lab and is about to pursue postdoctoral work at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Read about her experiences at Pitt: zurl.co/1z5eK

Dr. Wipf collaborated with the Schools of Medicine and Public Health to study two drug targets which could reduce the levels of the nuclear lamina protein, Lamin B1, which is associated with neurological disorders. Read more in Scientific Reports: zurl.co/MyP4g

The American Chemical Society has given Professor David Waldeck the 2025 award in Experimental Physical Chemistry. Read Pittwire’s highlight on David Waldeck here: zurl.co/odsns

In the Koide group’s most recent paper, they investigated atmospheric effects on Birch and Birch-type reductions. Read more in the Journal of Organic Chemistry: zurl.co/HFHEV

Peng Liu’s group collaborated with researchers from Singapore examining catalytic difluorocarbene insertion which enables access to fluorinated oxetane isosteres. Read more in Nature Chemistry: zurl.co/eXz1F