May 2020 Gave my first virtual presentation at the at the Virtual Symposium on Solid-State Organic Chemistry (VS3OC)! Thanks to Merck and the Molecular Design Institute at New York University for the invitation.
May 2020 Officially graduated from the University of Iowa with a PhD in Chemistry! Once a Hawkeye, always a Hawkeye.
May 2020 I am deeply honored to receive the A. Lynn Anderson Award for Research Excellence from the Department of Chemistry of the University of Iowa! I am indebted to my advisor, Prof. Len MacGillivray, for his constant encouragement and mentorship, and to my outstanding collaborators and friends who have shared this journey with me. God is good all the time!
May 2020 Celebrating that my undergraduate student mentee, Elizabeth A. Keene, has submitted and published her Honors in Chemistry thesis!
May 2020 “Repurposing of the anti-HIV drug Emtricitabine as a hydrogen-bonded cleft for bipyridines via cocrystallization” has been published in CrystEngComm! Thanks to Elizabeth A. Keene (undergraduate major) for your enthusiasm in advancing anti-HIV pharmaceutics. Paper
April 2020 I am extremely honored to receive the DRIVE Postdoctoral Fellowship from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign! I will be joining the research group of Prof. Ying Diao in Fall 2020 at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering as an Illinois Distinguished Postdoctoral Research Associate.
November 2019 My first collaborative project with Elani J. Cabrera-Vega (my fiancée!), and the Hurtado y de la Peña research group at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (México) has been published in MRS Advances! “Design of a DNA-Based Biomaterial by Sol-Gel Method: Application for the Recognition of Albendazole Sulfoxide”. Paper
November 2019 Had a great time hosting the “1st American-Mexican Symposium on Supramolecular Materials Design: From Boron to Hydrogen Bonding” at the University of Iowa as part of the American Chemical Society (ACS) Global Innovation Grant. Several bilateral collaborations coming soon! Recap
November 2019 Our collaborative effort with the Tivanski group (University of Iowa) has been published in Crystal Growth & Design as “Semiconductor Cocrystals Based on Boron: Generated Electrical Response with π-Rich Aromatic Molecules”. Got organic semiconductors? Paper
October 2019 Honored to receive the Paul R. Sharp Award for Outstanding Oral Presentation in Inorganic Chemistry from my talk on photoactive solids based on boron at the 2019 ACS Midwest Regional Meeting in Wichita, Kansas.
October 2019 Celebrating #OpenAccessWeek with the publication of “Channel Confinement of Aromatic Petrochemicals via Aryl−Perfluoroaryl Interactions with a B←N Host” in Frontiers in Chemistry. This is a great team effort with my amazing colleague and undergraduate mentee Megan D’mello. Paper
September 2019 The first example of a crystal-to-crystal [2+2]-photodimerization involving aurophilic interactions in now online in Inorganic Chemistry. Thanks to Changan Li for inviting me to be part of this project! Paper
August 2019 Delivered an oral presentation from my research involving boron-based dynamic crystals at the XXVIII International Materials Research Congress (2019, Cancun, Mexico) in the Molecular Nanomachines Symposium.
May 2019 Happy to be awarded the Most First Author Publications in 2018-2019 Award by the Department of Chemistry (University of Iowa) during the the Chemistry Celebration Night! Thankful for my hard-working collaborators and my awesome mentor.
March 2019 Happy to see that my project involving Long-Range Synthon Aufbau Modules (a.k.a. large supramolecular synthons) based on trihalophenols to direct reactivity in binary cocrystals has been published in Crystal Growth & Design! This is also the first of many papers from Changan Li at the MacGillivray group. Paper
February 2019 Delighted to see that my most challenging PhD project involving photoactivity of boronic ester-based solids is now online in Angewandte Chemie International Edition! Could not have done it without my advisor and my hard-working undergraduate student mentee, Kyle D’mello. Spoiler alert: thiophene can be separated from benzene using our product. Paper
December 2018 Happy to receive the CLAS Dissertation Writing Fellowship by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (University of Iowa). Time to wrap-up this incredible PhD journey.