Steve Zimmerman

Thanks, Aoon! So great to work with you at Illinois and really appreciate your ongoing friendship.

Prof Steve Zimmerman in black cap and gown flanked by three students in blue cap and gowns standing in front of red brick building. All three graduates are holding their diplomas.

My last three students at Illinois. Congratulations to Dr. Joel Roberts, Dr. Nafisa Ibrahim (co-advised by @jrl-electrochem.bsky.social), and Astarte Abbott. Three amazing students with a bright careers ahead!

Nice work!

Synthesis, Voltammetry, and Spectroelectrochemical Characterization of Tunable Ferrocene-Jeffamine Redox-Active (Co)polymers: Controlling Redox and Ionic Interactions Through Composition There is a critical need for predictably modulating the reactivity of redox-active polymers (RAPs) to improve their performance in applications such as catalysis, energy storage, and sensing. However,...

Some of the wildest voltammograms we’ve seen! And how to avoid them (just soak!) See our recent grad Nafisa’s systematic redox copolymers - synthesis, CV, SEIRAS and bulk electrolysis tour de force - in collab with @steveczimmerman.bsky.social #chemsky #electrochem pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

You beat us to the post 🥳 An absolute pleasure to work with Nafisa over these years! Pretty soon we will share her work on redox-active polymers!

Professors Joaquin Lopez Rodriguez and Steven Zimmerman standing on either side of Nafisa Ibrahim. All three smiling.

Congratulations to ZGroup and RodriguezGroup student Nafisa Ibrahim on passing her PhD defense. Super proud of this amazing scientist and wonderful person! 🥳🤩👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

DNA Mimic Foldamer Recognition of a Chromosomal Protein Biomolecular mimics are intended to outperform their natural counterparts. However, B-DNA surface mimicry to target DNA-binding proteins has long remained underdeveloped. We have introduced helical a...

Please check out our Angew. communication on DNA mimic foldamers that can outcompete DNA itself in the binding of proteins! 🧬

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

The irony of my column on a promising new data on personalized mRNA-based vaccine for pancreatic cancer coming out the same day that Iowa gets closer to banning "gene-based vaccines" is not lost on me. gift link:

Whether there is another election or not may well be irrelevant. Good chance they will have firm control of the election machinery by then so the dear leader can win in a popular landslide.

An organic reaction that is both interesting and highly useful.

Here is a tentative Supramolecular Chemistry starter kit. Please let me know if you wish to be added ! #ChemSky
go.bsky.app/RjRgi6n

a picture of a penguin with the word hello on it Alt: A picture of a cartoon penguin waving 'hello'; with the caption 'hello' at the bottom of the gif

Lots of RSC journals popping up on Bluesky (with proper domain names - well done!) including @chemicalscience.rsc.org; flagging for #Chemsky

Heartbreaking day in Israel as Shiri Bibas and her two sons Kfir and Ariel are buried in a single coffin. 😢

In our #ChemSci Pick of the Week today, Barry Carpenter argues that the "allowed" and "forbidden" classifications for electrocyclic reactions should be abandoned, based on NEVPT2 and DFT calculations.

Judge the evidence for yourself #ChemSky #CompChemSky 🧪! Read it free: doi.org/10.1039/D4SC...

Great talk by Gabi Lemcoff showing how solid solution synthesis produces latent metathesis catalysts.

Exciting time in Jerusalem - my first ICS meeting.

Trump Tracker: Firings, lawsuits and U.S. science in chaos Follow President Donald Trump’s impact on U.S. research and science globally

Thanks to everyone who shared this request. We updated our new Trump Tracker blog today with the voices of some federal scientists who reached out. More to come.

www.science.org/content/arti...

Picture of inside of museum of bedouin culture showing a Bedouin person sitting on a carpet with cooking implements

Bailey was a founder of the Museum of Bedouin Culture at the Joe Alon Center at the Kibbutz Lahav which I had the good fortune to visit last week.

Clinton Bailey, Who Documented a Vanishing Bedouin Culture, Dies at 88 Armed with a camera and tape recorder, he spent decades preserving the ancient traditions of nomadic Middle Eastern tribes.

Clinton Bailey, Who Documented a Vanishing Bedouin Culture, Dies at 88. What an amazing life! A series of chance meetings, including Ben Gurion's wife, and a curious nature leads to the extraordinarily important task of documenting Bedouin life.
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/w...

NIH cuts billions of dollars in biomedical funding, effective immediately The move halts a large slice of money for most universities and research institutions virtually overnight, imperiling vital research in everything from cancer to heart disease.

Another assault on US competitiveness at a time when biomedicine is roaring with innovation, an own-goal in a high-stakes international tournament. Of course the real losers are American people needing medicines and cures.

www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Black excellence: Twice as qualified, half as respected, and still passed over or labeled as a ‘DEI hire.’

Black folks have always known this because we’ve seen it happen to our own family members. I know I have.

So sad. The retreat from excellence by a private foundation signals just how much the fear of these people is driving behavior.

Picture of Herman Branson standing in front of equipment in his lab.

Only a couple years ago I learned that the structure of the alpha helix was solved by Herman Branson, a Howard professor who was doing a sabbatical with Pauling at the time, despite initial pushback from Pauling and Corey that his proposed helix model was much too tight. #BlackHistoryMonth

Degradable thermosets via orthogonal polymerizations of a single monomer - Nature Degradable thermoset multimaterials can be synthesized from a commercially accessible, biosourced monomer using orthogonal polymerizations in a single pot; after selective degredation, the resulting s...

Oh my 2,3-dihydrofuran,
I don’t know know any monomer cooler than
Thee.

Your cyclic vinyl ether,
Makes thermosetting so much easier
For me:

You ROMP in the dark, Crosslink in the light,
Recycle to monomer under vacuum overnight.
Degrade in acid or with a lot of O2,
Oh DHF this is an ode to you.

NSF by the Numbers NSF by the Numbers provides statistical and funding information for awards, NSF-funded institutions, funding rate, proposals evaluated, and obligations by fiscal year

Find out what the economic impact of the NSF is in your state new.nsf.gov/about/about-...

Crying or laughing emoji just won’t work but this is definitely why I’m here for BlueSky

Thank you, Nuno! This is very helpful. I should have thought to check Eric's website. Waiting for him to make the switch to Bluesky! With best wishes, Steve

Physical organic chemists - is there a good (non textbook) collected series of graduate-level problems on pericyclic reactions? Looking for problems involving mechanisms, stereochemistry, and application of W-H, FMO, and Zimmerman methods.

Cousin-in-law with a beautiful home in the Hollywood hills had to evacuate yesterday. Just learned his house/neighborhood was spared. Sympathies to all who were not so lucky.

And as I was writing my first reply, the great @lyleisaacs.bsky.social was joining #supramolecular #chemsky 😁