Happy Holidays from the MCWhite group!

The MCWhite group reflecting on many things to grateful for! Fantastic new graduate student Lynda Steen @ecalvinoaf  joins our amazing Pd subgroup team!

Thanks to Connor Holt for hosting an awesome visit @Pfizer Groton site. Great to meet with amazing Pfizer chemists that work every day to make our lives better! Shout out to @ChemistryUIUC Burke group alum Kaitlyn Grey and MCWhite group long-time collaborator Jeff Kohrt!

Fantastic to connect the MCWhite PdSOX crew at Princeton (Andrea Pace, Will Lyon, Sven Kaster) with OG Ken Fraunhoffer (BMS) one of the founders of Pd sulfoxide catalysis! 

Inspiring 3M lecture today from Craig Hawker @HawkerNation! Excellent talk on the power of branching and building blocks in polymer design and after building them up how you break them down!

Great to represent @MCWhiteGroup at the 19th BMOS (Brazilian Meeting on Organic Synthesis) in beautiful Bento Goncalves (the wine region of Brazil). Thank you Paulo Schneider and Diogo Ludtke for organizing great science with great wine, food & company!

Check out @NewsAtIllinois article on “Enzyme-inspired catalyst puts chemicals in right position to make ethers” by Liz Touchstone: https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/942355293?utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=tchsphyseng&utm_source=nb

Meet the Team: @ChemistryUIUC grads & WhiteSOX old guard Stephen Ammann @Gilead Sciences & Rulin Ma (“Ma-SOX”) now @Relay_Tx discovered etherification reactivity using Pd/SOX catalysis and started us on the path to “SvenSOX” -catalyzed etherification reported in @ScienceMagazine: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado8027

MCWhite group holiday & paper party celebrating SvenSOX @ Athina in Greektown and Blackhawks game. Excited to have Sven Kaster & Will Lyon back for the celebration!

Phenomenal Marvel lectures by F. Dean Toste on topics of supramolecular chemistry and bioconjugation with the common theme of the power of chemistry to broadly impact science. 

Great visit @PrincetonChem for the Novartis lecture w/ Michael Shultz @Novartis. Thanks Jose Roque, Paul @ChirikGroup, Todd @Hysterlab, Rob Knowles & Dave @dmac68 & their tremendous grad students & postdocs for inspiring science & warm hospitality. Big shout out to @MCWhitegroup Andria Pace, Will Lyon &  Sven Kaster killing it in @MacMillan group!

Throwback Thursday: Check out MCW’s investiture speech from 2020:  “C-H Oxidation: An Outsider’s Approach “. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcZXukYFT3w

Tour de force Fuson lectures from Seth Herzon @HerzonLab spanning from a riveting total synthesis story of the Securiflustra securifrons alkaloids to advances in small molecule treatments for brain tumors.

Great visit to UNICAMP in Brazil for symposium organized by former MCWhite postdoc Prof. Emilio Carlos de Lucca Junior. Wonderful to see great talks by colleagues and get to know the next generation of awesome Brazilian chemists. Obrigado!

Our recently reported etherification in @ScienceMagazine is so easy, a middle schooler can do it, check it out (video Tracy Crane @ChemistryUIUC) : https://youtu.be/4twNJ_LHblo

A message from MCW on diversity 

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