Recent News
January 2025
Matt Bock and Casey Olen receive the Kobayashi Award for the Best Mentor in the group as voted on by their colleagues.
Ironically enough, the same month, sophomore undergraduate Yuki Kobayashi, son of Dr. Tetsuya Kobayashi, the namesake of the eponymous award joins the Denmark group. Welcome Yuki!
March 2025
Scott reunites with his Yamaha R1 for a fun ride in San Diego with his riding buddy Marlon Carlos prior to the ACS Spring Meeting.
Scott enjoys a group alumni dinner in San Diego with former group members (in order of seniority) Jim Edwards, Mark Seierstad, Laurent Gomez, Nate Werner, Anastassia Matviitsuk and Brett Hemrick, all organized by Robert Zhang. Great to catch up with everyone!
April 2025
The SED Group’s first paper in Nature appears describing the amazing catalytic allylation of carbohydrates in water with indium. Congratulations Tapas, Travis, Matthew, and Marty Burke as well as Federico and Klavs our collaborators from MIT.
Scott visits Emory University as the inaugural Padwa Senior Lecturer. In addition to great hospitality and friendship, he takes home one of Al’s signature mobiles and masks! Thanks Al for all you have done for the community!
May 2025
The Chemistry Convocation was a special event for the Denmark Group.
Senior graduate student Casey Olen wins the prestigious ACS Presidential P3 Medal for Graduate Research Excellence.
Superstar undergraduate Yilun Li receives the R. C. Fuson Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research; the Royal Society of Chemistry Certificate of Undergraduate Excellence and the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry Undergraduate Award in Organic Chemistry....whew! He will be pursuing graduate studies at Princeton University in the fall. Congratulations Yilun and we look forward to great things!!
Qingyi Zhu graduated and will be attending the University of Washington for graduate studies in the fall. Congratulations Qingyi and best of luck!
Casey Olen successfully defends his PhD thesis and will be heading off to Pfizer Process Research in Groton. Congratulations Casey....we will miss you!!
June 2025
Scott participated in the Centennial Celebration of his PhD advisor Prof. Albert Eschenmoser at a gala symposium at the ETH-Zürich. Prof. Eschenmoser’s autobiography, which Scott and a few of his friends from graduate student days translated and prepared for publication, was officially released at the event. It is part of the Lives in Chemistry series......check it out!
Fourth year graduate student Matthew Albritton is honored with a Pines Graduate Fellowship for the AY 2025-26 for his outstanding research work on the mechanism of the indium catalyzed allylation of carbohydrates. Congratulations Matthew!
Matthew also won a Fuson Graduate Travel Award which he will take to the Reactions and Processes Gordon Research Conference (as well as the GRS) in July. Congratulations Matthew!
And making it a "Trifecta" Matthew also received a Pines Travel Award which will send him to his alma mater, The University of Florida, in Gainsville. Congratulations, yet again Matthew!
The Group welcomes Phoebe Chiang as our new administrative assistant! Great to have you here Phoebe!
July 2025
Scott delivers the "Vilsmeier Lecture" at the University of Regensburg, Germany at a festive celebration of student and faculty awards, complete with great German beer and bratwurst!
August 2025
Matt Bock successfully defends his Ph.D. thesis and will be staying on as a postdoc during his job search this fall.
Dr. Karn Parmar completes his 3-year postdoctoral stay and heads for the Process Research Group at AbbVie where he will apply his expertise in synthetic chemistry and data science.
Matthew Albritton continues his streak with the Vandevere Voorhees Award for the best Original Research Proposal this cycle.
Scott (former Editor-in-Chief and President) participates in a symposium at the Fall ACS Meeting celebrating Eight Decades of Organic Reactions.