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!