Past Seminars & Events

Professor Amanda Morris
Chair, Department of Chemistry
Virgina Tech

From Catalysis to Drug Delivery: Photodynamic Responses in MOFs

Metal–organic frameworks offer a unique platform for controlling chemical reactivity through precise structural and electronic design, yet their behavior under photoexcitation remains incompletely understood. This talk explores how photoinduced metal–ligand bond dynamics in MOFs can be deliberately harnessed to enable function rather than failure. Using Fe-carboxylate frameworks such as MIL-101(Fe) as a model system, we demonstrate that ligand-to-metal charge- transfer excitation transiently weakens metal–carboxylate bonds, generating short-lived coordination vacancies that can participate in catalytic reactions. Time-resolved vibrational and electronic spectroscopies reveal that the lifetime of these photodissociated states can be tuned over orders of magnitude through linker functionalization, directly influencing photocatalytic behavior, including carbon dioxide reduction. Extending this concept beyond catalysis, we show that larger photoinduced structural changes can be leveraged for controlled framework exfoliation and cargo release, enabling light-triggered drug delivery and photodynamic therapeutic applications. Together, these results establish photodynamic bonding as a general design principle for MOFs, illustrating how excited- state coordination chemistry can be programmed to drive reactivity, transport, and on-demand material response across energy and biomedical contexts.

Amanda Morris

Amanda Morris is a Professor of Inorganic and Energy Chemistry and Chair of the Department of Chemistry at Virginia Tech. She received her BS from Penn State University, her PhD from Johns Hopkins University, and completed postdoctoral training at Princeton University. Her research program focuses on understanding light–matter interactions in molecular and extended materials, with particular emphasis on how excited-state processes govern catalysis, charge transport, and structural dynamics in metal–organic frameworks. Morris’s work spans photocatalysis for energy conversion, photoinduced coordination chemistry, and light-triggered material responses, combining electrochemistry, spectroscopy, and time- resolved techniques. She is a recipient of numerous honors, including an NSF CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and a Dreyfus Teacher–Scholar Award. Morris serves as an Associate Editor of Chemical Physics Reviews and as an American Chemical Society Expert in Sustainable Energy. She is active in community leadership, serving as the Chair of the Inorganic Division of the American Chemical Society and the chair-elect of the InterAmerican Photochemical Society.

Host: Prof. Gwendolyn Bailey

Professor Jerome Robinson
Department of Chemistry
Brown University

Enabling Catalytic Strategies to Stereo- and Sequence-Controlled Oxygenated (Co)Polymers

Polymer sustainability has quickly become a global environmental concern, where an estimated 4.9 GTons of polymer waste currently exist in the environment. Central to addressing this challenge is the generation of polymers with robust materials properties that also embed or encode end-of-use. Central to addressing this challenge is the generation of polymers with robust materials properties that also embed or encode end-of-use; however, access to such high-performance materials have been limited by selective and scalable catalytic methods. In this talk, I will share some of our group’s recent advances in designing highly active and selective catalysts for the synthesis of oxygenated (co) polymers through ring-opening polymerization. I will share how controlling the structure and dynamics of rare-earth and zinc-based compounds can enable the design of novel catalytic processes capable of exquisite control of polymer stereochemistry, sequence, and molecular weight to access high-performance, biodegradable materials.

Jerome Robinson

Dr. Jerome R. Robinson was born and raised in a small town in WI, and received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse in 2009 working with Professor Rob McGaff. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania in 2014 working with Professors Patrick J. Walsh and Eric J. Schelter. Prior to his appointment at Brown, Jerome worked at Axalta Coating Systems as a Research Chemist in the areas of corrosion science and polymer coatings while holding visiting faculty appointments at Haverford College and Widener University. Jerome joined the faculty of Brown University in 2016 and is currently an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Chemistry. Jerome’s research interests are interdisciplinary, and lie at the interface of inorganic, organic, materials, and biochemistry. At Brown, Jerome’s research has focused on developing innovative, fundamental approaches to harness metal-ligand lability to address grand societal challenges related to the design of sustainable polymers, catalysis, and radiopharmaceuticals. Jerome’s mechanistically-driven research program has received several awards, including the ACS PRF DNI, NSF CAREER, PMSE Young Investigator, and NIH MIRA. In addition to research, Jerome is dedicated to improving the quality and accessibility of science education and professional development. Jerome considers mentoring and working with students one of the best parts of his job, and in 2023, he received Brown’s Graduate School Faculty Award for Advising & Mentoring. Outside of the lab, he can be found spending time with his wife and two children, cooking, staying active, and traveling.

Host: Libbi Rogan (Lamb Group)

Professor Terrell R. Morton
Identity and Justice in STEM Education, Educational Psychology
University of Illinois Chicago

“Ain‘t No Stoppin’ Us Now”: Advancing Justice & Joy Within and Beyond STEM Education

Since 2020, there has been an ebb and flow in the national investments in and commitments to justice in postsecondary STEM education research and practice. Such processes have led to the current state of affairs, where many justice-oriented scholars and practitioners feel they are at a professional crossroads, with the outcomes of their decisions having significant consequences for their physical and psychological well- being. A reality that leaves many feeling hopeless. In this presentation, I discuss strategies for advancing both justice and joy within and beyond STEM education through a framework of Radical Hope.

Terrell R. Morton

Dr. Terrell R. Morton is an Associate Professor of Identity and Justice in STEM Education at the University of Illinois Chicago. He is an alumnus of North Carolina A&T State University (B.S. Chemistry), University of Miami (MS Neuroscience), and UNC Chapel Hill (Ph.D. Education - Learning Sciences and Psychological Studies). Dr. Morton identifies as a Scholar- Activist! His work strives to transform the positioning and understanding of Blackness in mainstream education, specifically STEM, seeking justice and joy for Black women and Black students. Through every endeavor, he strives to “walk it like he talks it.” 

Twitter/X/Bluesky: @DrTRMorton

Host: Prof. Lee Penn

Professor P. Andrew Evans
Department of Chemistry
Queen’s University

Stereoselective Construction of Challenging C-C Bonds and the Development of Antimetastatic Agents

The seminar will explore the development and application of new stereoselective C-C bond-forming reactions in the synthesis of bioactive agents. Specifically, it will highlight a novel dynamic kinetic resolution of a,b-unsaturated aldehydes,[1] the catalytic asymmetric alkylation of homoenolates[2] and the development of a concise, efficient and scalable synthesis of antimetastatic agents.[3] 

Andy Evans

Professor P. Andrew Evans is the Alfred R. Bader Chair of Organic Chemistry and a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Organic and Organometallic Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at Queen’s University. He is also a Changjiang Scholar at Central South University in China. He received a B.Sc. with honors in Applied Chemistry at Newcastle Polytechnic in 1987 and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge in 1991under the supervision of Andrew B. Holmes, FRS. He then pursued postdoctoral research with Philip D. Magnus, FRS, at the University of Texas at Austin as a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow. In 1993, he began his independent career at the University of Delaware, where he was promoted to Professor before moving to Indiana University in 2001. In 2006, he became the Heath Harrison Chair of Organic Chemistry at the University of Liverpool before assuming his current role in 2012. His recent awards include the R. U. Lemieux Award, the Paul G. Gassman Distinguished Service Award, the Harry and Carol Mosher Award, a Changjiang Scholar Award, an ACS Cope Scholar Award and the RSC Pedler Award. He has been actively involved in the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry, serving as a Member-at-Large, Councilor, National Organic Symposium Executive Officer and Division Chair. He currently co-chairs the ACS-DOC Graduate Research Symposium. Professor Evans has held editorial roles as an Associate Editor for Chemical Communications and Synthesis. He is also the former Editor-in-Chief and current President of Organic Reactions. He has published over 150 papers, articles, reviews, book chapters and monographs and has delivered more than 500 plenary and invited lectures.

References

1.  
   1. Majhi, J.; Turnbull, B. W. H.; Ryu, H.; Park, J.; Baik, M.-H.; Evans, P. A. J. Am Chem. Soc. 2019, 141, 11770.
   2. Ma, J.; Li, H.; Majhi, J.; Evans, P. A. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2025, e202520674
2. Wright, T. B.; Turnbull, B. W. H.; Evans, P. A. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2019, 58, 9886.
3.  
   1. Bhavin V. Pipaliya, B. V.; Trofimova, D. N.; Grange, R. L.; Aeluri, M.; Deng, X.; Shah, K.; Craig, A. W.; Allingham, J. S.; Evans, P. A. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2021, 143, 6847.
   2. D. N. Trofimova, M. Aeluri, K. D. Veeranna, Y. Jiang, R. L. Grange, B. V. Pipaliya, M. Subaramanian, A. W. Craig, P. A. Evans andJ. S. Allingham, J. Med. Chem. 2024, 67, 5315.

Regents Professor Donald Truhlar
Department of Chemistry
University of Minnesota

Density functional theory

Density functional theory has become the go-to tool for both theoreticians and experimentalists who want to use electronic structure theory to understand thermochemistry, spectra, mechanisms, and dynamics. Density functional theory has come quite a long distance since the award of a Nobel Prize to Walter Kohn in 1998. This lecture will attempt the almost impossible task of something for everyone. I will start with “What is density functional theory?” for beginners, continue on to “How well does it work?”, and finish with comments on the current state of the art including multi- configuration pair-density functional theory and the unpublished work on machine-learned integral-driven density functionals currently being developed in our group with Dr. Dayou Zhang and Dr. Yinan Shu.

Donald Truhlar

Donald G. Truhlar received a Ph. D. in Chemistry at Caltech and joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota in 1969; he is currently Regents Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Physics. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Chinese Chemical Society and the Chemical Research Society of India. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, American Physical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry, and World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists. He received Doctor Honoris Causa from the Technical University of Lodz, Poland and distinguished alumnus awards from St. Mary’s University of Minnesota and Caltech. He received the Outstanding Advising and Mentoring Award from the Council of Graduate Students. His research interests are centered on chemical dynamics, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics.

Host: Prof. Kade Head-Marsden

This event is the latest in the department's ongoing Climate Event Series that aims to continuously improve the professional, academic, and social climate of the Department of Chemistry. In the December climate event, we will discuss the outcomes of a semester-long effort to understand and engage in conversations focused on aligning faculty and student expectations to develop stronger mentoring relationships. In preparation for the December workshop, many department members took a data-collecting survey, our faculty did a workshop activity at the August faculty meeting, and graduate students participated in a September town hall. All of this is done with the objectives of (1) better understanding how expectations align and (2) implementing best practices to promote better alignment of expectations. Prof. Yoji Shimizu from the UMN Medical School will facilitate the event.

All Chemistry faculty, staff, and graduate students are encouraged to attend.

Professor Eric Anslyn
Department of Chemistry
University of Texas at Austin

Synthesis and Sequencing of Sequenced-Defined Biotic and Abiotic Polymers

There is little argument that many of the grand achievements of biotechnology, biochemistry, and chemical biology stem from advances in synthetic organic chemistry embodied in the development of solid-phase synthetic approaches for proteins and nucleic acids. Of equal importance to the synthesis of the biopolymers, however, are methods for their sequencing. Revolutions in nucleic acid sequencing have led to single molecule and Next-Gen parallel methods. Similar advances in protein sequencing have lagged behind. In collaboration with the Marcotte group at UT Austin, we have created a single-molecule peptide sequencing routine referred to as fluorosequencing. Therein, peptides are N-terminal captured, the amino acids selectively labelled with fluorophores, C-terminal differentiated, and then placed on TIRF microscope for rounds of Edman degradation. The development and implementation of the organic chemistry necessary in the method will be discussed. On another topic, the sequencing of sequence-defined polymers, other than nucleic acids and proteins, shows promise as a new paradigm for data storage. We have devised the first use of oligourethanes for storing and reading encoded information. As a proof of principle, an approach will be described using a text passage from Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. It was encoded in oligourethanes and reconstructed via chain-end degradation sequencing. We developed Mol.E-coder, a software tool that utilizes a Huffman encoding scheme to convert the character table to hexadecimal. The passage was capable of being reproduced wholly intact by a third-party, without any purifications or the use of MS/MS, despite multiple rounds of compression, encoding, and synthesis. Further, we have used mass-tags on the oligourethanes to sort mixtures and keep track of simultaneous sequencing, and we have generated electrochemical methods for sequencing. Overall, this presentation will highlight the interplay and utility of synthesis and sequencing in sequence-defined polymers.

Eric Anslyn

Professor Eric V. Anslyn received his BS in chemistry from the California State University Northridge in 1982. He did his doctoral work under the direction of Robert Grubbs at the Caltech, receiving a PhD in 1987. Afterwards, he was an NSF post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University, working with Ronald Breslow. From there he started as an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin in 1989. At UT Austin he rose through the ranks to currently hold the Welch Regents Chair of Chemistry, and is a University Distinguished Teaching Professor, as well as an HHMI Professor. He is a Cope Scholar, and he has won the James, Flack, Norris Award from the ACS for advancements in physical organic chemistry, the Izatt- Christianson Award for Supramolecular Chemistry, and the Czarnik award for molecular sensors. Dr. Anslyn was recently inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Science. His research is in the areas of physical organic and supramolecular chemistry, focused on deciphering reaction mechanisms, novel methods for chemosensing, materials chemistry, and information encoding.

Host: Elizabeth Rogan

This seminar is generously sponsored by the Paul Gassman fund.

Professor David Waldeck
Department of Chemistry
University of Pittsburgh

Adventures with Chiral-Induced Spin Selectivity (CISS)

Since Louis Pasteur, chemists have been fascinated by chirality, however its connection with electron spin was not realized until the 21st century and its implications for chemistry and biochemistry is only beginning to be revealed. I will introduce the chiral- induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect by discussing some of the key experiments in its development and discovery. Following this introduction, I will describe some of our recent studies that probe the spin-dependence of electronic interactions with chiral molecules and spin selectivity in electron transfer reactions.

David Waldeck

Professor David H. Waldeck was born in Cincinnati Ohio. He obtained a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1983 and was an IBM Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley from 1983 to 1985. In 1985 he began his independent career as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh, where he now serves as a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and the Academic Director of the Petersen Institute of NanoScience and Engineering. David’s research program uses methods of spectroscopy, electrochemistry, and microscopy to investigate primary processes in the condensed phase and in nanoscale assemblies. He and his research group are known for their research into solvent friction and solvent effects on reaction rates, their studies of long-range electron transfer at chemically modified electrodes and in supramolecular constructs, and the discovery of the chiral- induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect.

Publications: >280 peer reviewed papers; h-index 80 (Google Scholar), 3 monographs, including the textbook Principles of Physical Chemistry

Host: Professor Renee Frontiera

Professor Troy Van Voorhis
Department of Chemistry
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

Electron and Energy Transfer in Molecules and Materials

Electronic reactions play a key role in understanding a host of physical processes – electron transfer reactions that power electrochemistry, energy transfer reactions that drive photosynthesis and electron spin dynamics that govern magnetism, just to name a few. In this talk, we will discuss how the “reactant” and “product” states for these types reactions can be clearly defined using the electron density as the fundamental variable. In particular, we will highlight the utility of diabatic electronic states in qualitatively and quantitively describing these fascinating systems. We will show how this picture leads to a unified description of electron transfer in photochemistry, energy transfer in molecular devices and singlet fission in solar cells.

Troy Van Voorhis

Dr. Troy Van Voorhis is the Haslam and Dewey Professor of Chemistry at MIT, where he currently serves as department head. His research focuses on electronic structure theory, with particular focus on electronic excited states and photochemical dynamics. Prof. Van Voorhis received his B.A. in Chemistry and Mathematics from Rice University, his PhD in Chemistry from UC Berkeley and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. Prof. Van Voorhis is an NSF CAREER Fellow, a David and Lucille Packard Fellow, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow and was awarded MIT’s School of Science Prize for Excellence in Graduate Teaching.

Host: Professor Kade Head-Marsden

Professor Sarah Reisman
Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
California Institute of Technology

Prof. Reisman will deliver a series of three talks, all of which will take place in 331 Smith Hall:

• Talk 1:  November 11th, 9:45 a.m.  
• Talk 2: November 12th, 4:00 p.m.  
• Talk 3: November 13th, 9:45 a.m.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention: Natural Products and the Chemistry They Inspire

The microbes and plants of the natural world are master chemists, producing secondary metabolites that disarm their enemies and confer evolutionary advantages for survival. These natural products, which include well-known therapeutic agents such as penicillin and taxol, serve not only as medicines but also as powerful tools to probe human biology. At the same time, their structural complexity provides an inspiring platform for advancing the frontiers of synthetic chemistry.   

Our group is engaged in the total synthesis of several architecturally intricate natural products, with a particular emphasis on developing new convergent fragment-coupling and annulation strategies. The densely functionalized frameworks of these molecules, rich in heteroatoms and stereogenic centers, continually challenge the limits of current synthetic technology and motivate the invention of new synthetic methods.   

Over three lectures, I will share results from both our natural product synthesis and our methods development projects. My first seminar will highlight recent advances from our laboratory in the total synthesis of diterpenes, highlighting the application of modern transition metal catalysis in total synthesis. My second seminar will describe our recent work on the development of Ni-catalyzed asymmetric reductive cross-coupling. My third seminar will detail our recent forays into reductive Sm catalysis, including new avenues for asymmetric catalysis.

Sarah Reisman

Professor Sarah Reisman earned a BA in Chemistry from Connecticut College in New London, CT and her Ph.D. in chemistry from Yale University. Following postdoctoral research at Harvard University, in 2008, Sarah joined the faculty at the California Institute of Technology where she is now the Bren Professor of Chemistry and the Norman Davidson Leadership Chair for the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. Research in the Reisman laboratory seeks to advance the science of chemical synthesis. Reisman is recognized as a leader in the area of natural product synthesis, where her group has contributed new strategy-driven approaches to biologically active molecules. Reisman is an editorial board member at Organic Syntheses and an associate editor for the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Reisman has been recognized with several awards for teaching and research, including an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a Cottrell Scholar Award, the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, the Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award, the ACS Elias J. Corey Award, and the Mukaiyama Award.

Host: Professor Ian Tonks