We had a busy Spring, with three students successfully defending their honors theses… congrats to Adam, Brian, and Cathy!

Our diimides made their way to Germany and the Bunz Lab and turned into a fun series of azaacenes with NIR absorptions and great electron affinities. Read more here.

Conor fended off the pandemic with a presentation and successful defense of his Honors work. Conor will stick around Macalester for a little, take a gap year, then pursue a PhD at UC Berkeley. Congrats Conor!

It’s official! Dennis has received tenure at Macalester, which was only possible because of the contributions of everyone who spent time in the Cao Lab. We’re looking forward to the next ??? years!

The lab had a 2020 bumper crop of alumni who have accepted offers to pursue PhDs all over the country! Congrats to Joe (Purdue), Kellie (Georgia Tech), Kofi (UT Austin), Stella I. (Johns Hopkins), and Stella L. (Caltech)!!

The lab was recently awarded an NSF RUI grant to study aromatic diimide stabilized acenes and radicals. The funding will also support the expansion of these research efforts into laboratory courses. Congrats everyone!

Our paper reporting the serendipitous discovery of one of the most stabilized phosphonium ylides is out now in Chem Eur J! This ylide is also a potential supramolecular building block. Congrats Minji, Stella, Andrew, and Victor!

Our article on an angled aromatic diimide and its derivatization into heteroacenes was accepted by the Journal of Organic Chemistry. Great work by Stella, Kellie, and Stella!

Kellie Stellmach was selected for an American Chemical Society Division of Organic Chemistry Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF)! This award will fund Kellie’s 2019 summer research into the preparation of novel azaacenes, in addition to providing access to professional development opportunities at an industrial campus. Congrats Kellie!

Dennis was selected by the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement for a 2019 Cottrell Scholar Award, which seeks to identify “leader[s] in integrating science teaching and research at a top U.S. research university or a primarily undergraduate institution.” This award will support research into some crazy cationic molecules. Congrats Dennis!

Penny Kahn’s Honors Thesis work on the chemical composition the mating gifts produced by harvestmen (also known as daddy long-legs), was recently published in Ecology and Evolution! This work was the result of a spontaneous collaboration with Prof. Sarah Boyer in the Macalester Biology Department.

Our work describing cationic pyromellitic diimides with modified redox activity has been published in ACS Omega! Congrats to Andrew, Kofi, Qifan, and Mohammed, and many thanks to our collaborator Prof. Janzen for crystallography expertise!

Eman successfully defended her thesis today. She worked for 1.5 years and made great progress on the synthesis of a monomer and its assembled cage. Congrats Eman!

Another piece of the saga of lock-arm supramolecular ordering-based organic ferroelectric crystals from Dennis’ ongoing graduate and postdoctoral project has been published in JACS. This time, the observation of two dimensions of polarization is presented alongside strong evidence for non-centrosymmetry.

Once again this summer we have a busy group. This year we welcome four fresh faces as part of an HHMI-funded Young Researchers program. Stella, Fernando, Nhu, and Hiywot will be with us for 10 weeks, studying organic chemistry and synthesizing aromatic compounds. Welcome!

Penny successfully defended her thesis today! Her interdisciplinary Honors project relied on her chemistry skills to determine the content of secretions made by harvestmen, better known as daddy long-legs. Penny’s findings have provided significant insight into the evolution of mating behavior. Congrats Penny!

Kellie Stellmach is a first-year who is joining the lab. She will be investigating the co-crystallization of complementary hydrogen-bonding partners, welcome Kellie!

The Mindlin Foundation selected Eman for their 2017 Undergraduate Mentored Research Program. The award provides funds for Eman to continue her research into molecular cages all the way through the end of 2017. Congratulations Eman!

The American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund has generously funded our proposal on the synthesis of novel aromatic imide compounds for the next few years!

Dennis’ PhD advisor, Fraser Stoddart, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on molecular machines and switches. Dennis is grateful to have played a part in the Stoddart group, and hopes that his work was at least 0.0001% responsible for the Prize. Congratulations Fraser!!!

It’ll be a busy 10 weeks of summer with 6 students in the lab. Andrew, Qifan, Eman, and Joe are rising junior chemistry majors, and Kofi is a rising sophomore who intends to be a major as well. They will all be synthesizing crazy molecules, characterizing their properties, and generally having a wild time. These opportunities were made possible through generous awards by the MacKnight Haan Ludwig Summer Research Fund (Andrew and Qifan), Violet Olson Beltmann Fund (Eman and Mohammed), and Science and Research Office Funds (Joe and Kofi). Welcome everyone!

Dan presented and successfully defended his Honors Project after an appropriate grilling by a friendly committee. We look forward to seeing his thesis on our shelves soon!

This year’s NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program applicant field had over 17000 applicants, many of whom are current graduate students. We’re proud that Dan was recognized among so many other qualified candidates. Congratulations Dan!

Our group continues to expand! Mohammed is a sophomore chemistry major who got into research by computationally evaluating his organic chemistry professor’s conformational analysis abilities. Mohammed will be attempting to synthesize some novel aromatic imides that he has been modeling over the last semester. Welcome Mohammed!

The group keeps on growing with the addition of Penny Kahn! Penny is a biology major and anthropology/chemistry minor in her junior year and she is excited to be enhancing her chemical skillset in preparation for a future career in research. Penny will be developing new reactions for the synthesis of aromatic imides. Welcome Penny!

A new Combiflash Rf+ is up running in the Cao lab! This automated chromatography instrument will hopefully lead to exponential increases in the productivity of the group.

The group is doubling in size with the arrival of Dan Lee! Dan is a senior undergraduate who is participating in the Macalester Honors Program for the 2015-2016 academic year. As part of the Honors Program, Dan will be synthesizing novel structures using alkyne metathesis. Dan comes to the group with previous summer research experiences at UIUC in Kami Hull’s lab as an REU Scholar, and at Caltech in Robert Grubbs’ lab as an Amgen Scholar.

Dennis begins his independent career at Macalester officially on August 1, 2015. In the meantime, he has excitedly spent some time creating this rudimentary website. Hopefully it will be filled with interesting news updates as the years go on.