White Group

Honor to be the 2025 Scaiano Lecture at U. Ottawa & meet Tito Scaiano whose love for chemistry & education makes it possible. Thanks to my host Claudia Natola & an amazing group of talented grads for their energy and engagement.

It was an honor to speak at the EFMC 2025 meeting in beautiful Porto, Portugal with an inspiring group of colleagues to a packed house! Thanks to fantastic organizers Nuno Maulide & Malin Lemurell!

Meet: Andrew Yue (UIUC BS 2024, now grad student @JacobsenGroup) joined the MCWhite group as a freshman under mentorship of Brenna Budaitis. He merged C(sp3)H/N(sp2) cross-couplings with the Mori-Ban for a diversifiable synthesis of zafirlukast (Accolade) (@J_A_C_S pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...) .

Meet the Team: Congrats Zach Firestein winner of the @ChemistryUIUC Fuson award! Checkout Zach’s work on making 3o arylamines using a Ma-SOX Pd catalyzed C(sp3)H/N(sp2) cross-coupling (@J_A_C_S pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...) at the Heterocycles GRC 2026!

Meet the Team: Brenna Budaitis a MCWhite group & @ChemistryUIUC alum (PhD ’24) now a scientist @abbvie. Checkout Brenna at graduation and part of her thesis research recently published @J_A_C_S : pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Check it out @J_A_C_S : pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Meet “Amination Nation” team @OCB_UIUC @ChemistryUIUC: Grad student captain Brenna Budaitis & co-captain Zachary Firestein w/ undergrad Andrew Yue. They discovered a reaction to synthesize challenging 3o arylamines (>80 examples) using one catalyst (Ma-SOXPd) under uniform & ambient conditions

Ligand/amine dance: Ma-SOX does a "do-si-do" with aryl amines on Pd to promote C—H cleavage & functionalization. The result: a highly efficient catalytic reaction to make electron deficient and sterically hindered tertiary arylamines. Check it out @J_A_C_S : pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

What are MCW, Brenna Budaitis (@abbvie) and Zach Firestein working on? Something dropping soon!

Throwback Thursday: It’s all about Ma-SOX! Check out Rulin Ma's (MCWhite Group PhD 2019, @Relay_Tx) publication introducing THE catalyst for allylic C—H to C—N cross-couplings. More coming soon…

pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Great hosting our awesome Snyder Scholar Haley Pottle @holy_cross this summer! Great chemistry & group runs!

Alex Gomez’s graduation was marked by many fun & athletic group events. Thanks for encouraging us to find joy together staying active! Looking forward to seeing your group runs at Swarthmore !

Throwback Thursday: Proud of MCWhite group alum Jennifer Howell (postdoc, 2015) for promotion to Associate VP @Lillypharma! Her HBF4 strategy makes C—H oxidations & amination in [N] compounds possible: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Throwback Thursday: Mentor & Mentee Reunited! MCWhite Group alums Prof. Shauna Paradine (PhD 2015, ‪@paradinelab.bsky.social, Univ. Rochester) & Prof. Shannon Miller (BS 2016, @_ShannonMMiller, Scripps): www.nature.com/articles/nch...

Thanks to rising star Yang Yang for hosting an awesome visit to UC Santa Barbara @ucsbchemistry for Novartis Lectureship. Incredible students & faculty and an inspiring lecture from Dr. Christopher Sarko @Novartis!

It was an honor to be the 1st student selected seminar speaker at Baylor. Was great to see old friends, meet talented students and see great science!

Great visit to Vertex and Pfizer in San Diego. Thanks to Andrew Dinh, Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Paul Richardson, Pfizer for hosting. Tremendous respect and appreciation for the amazing work of chemists that discover and make medicines to make our lives better!

So proud of MCWhite group PhD Siraj Ali who will be starting as an Assistant Prof. at Wayne State University this fall!

Dr. Raundi Quevedo (PhD 2022) gave a fantastic talk on molecular glues as the Novartis speaker @novartis.bsky.social. MCWhite group was excited to welcome her back!

Phenomenal Novartis Lectures @novartis.bsky.social by Donna Blackmond and our own Raundi Quevedo!

Axe Bar group outing in celebration of Shauna’s visit! Epic subgroup faceoff: Pd/nitrene/oxo. Can you guess who won?

Awesome to host Prof. Shauna Paradine @paradinelab.bsky.social, the OG of nitrene & White-Paradine catalyst, at UIUC. Her group is finding powerful ways to forge carbon scaffolds that we hope to aminate!

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