Mark Levin

We are pleased to share that Assistant Professor Anna Wuttig has been named a 2026 Sloan Research Fellow! 🏆

This honor from the Sloan Foundation recognizes early-career scientists with the potential to revolutionize their fields.

#UChicago #Chemistry #SloanFellow #Electrochemistry #WomenInSTEM

Heart-wrenching.

@merz.bsky.social I read the latest "AI is coming" manifesto by Shumer and was genuinely confused to read a prediction that was a ~year old that did not happen - and it is surprising to me that these folks don't recognize how damaging it is to their credibility

This is obvious bait but ok, let's hear it

At least one of those is... Definitely not a nitrile

Pro-LLM academics bemoaning how long it takes to write and review papers are telling on themselves. Those tasks are supposed to take a long time because that's how you can be thoughtful, thorough, and rigorous.

Filtering yourself is how you only communicate things you think are worth reading.

Publishers are already seeing unprecedented quantities of AI slop and unethical AI use by authors and reviewers, and it's terrifying that tools like this will open the floodgates further. Gen AI is a plague and I wish it a swift death.

Good start www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwcK...

Gregory Bovino Gets Demoted The Border Patrol chief was the public face of a traveling immigration crackdown on cities governed by Democrats.

BREAKING Greg Bovino has been removed as Border Patrol "commander at large" and will return to El Centro Calif, where he is expected to retire soon. A stunning turnaround after Pretti killing. Bovino's traveling blue city crackdown is over www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

This is a wild story

Managing Director Department PSD Chemistry: Staff Leadership About the Department One of the first departments founded at the University of Chicago was the Department of Chemistry. Since its inception, the Department o...

The University of Chicago Department of Chemistry is currently seeking a Managing Director to Lead Department of Chemistry Operations.

Follow the link for full job description, qualifications and benefits- tinyurl.com/3p3r8rn9

Today on @chemrxiv.org, we disclose a C-to-N replacement that actually works complex natural products - a pipe-dream when we started. The secret is to lean in to the triplet nitrene.

Congrats Dong Il, and thanks to the whole team, including collaborators from Sanofi!

chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr...

I Tried to Be the Government. It Did Not Go Well. My five-month quest to monitor the weather, track inflation, and inspect milk for harmful microorganisms

if you want a long read that involves udders, a hot air balloon, and some extremely dubious data on egg prices, the story I’ve been working on for the last few months where I tried to single-handedly take on every government function myself is now online! www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Considering that IMAN (4) is also in this picture, the concentrated crossword power on display here is overwhelming. Blinding. Nuclear. ☢️

The National Weather Service used AI to create a forecast for Idaho. Low chances of wind for the nonexistent towns of Cocrerrireod, Orangeotild and Whata Bod www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2026...

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Be Declared Honorary Virus The ceremony will feature roadkill hors d’oeuvres, goblets of beef tallow, and a sewage plunge.

I continue to be enraged by everything the secretary of health and human services is doing www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

is there some way I can quickly unlearn all of history so as to feel better about recent events

Skeletal editing: How close are we to true cut-and-paste chemistry? Reactions that alter organic scaffolds by a single atom are already proving useful, but time will tell if they’ll fundamentally change how molecules are made

✂️ July: Adventures in atom swapping!
cen.acs.org/synthesis/me...
(see also this very successful feature cen.acs.org/synthesis/Sk...)

🧪 August: Beth Halford, Laura Howes, and I revamped C&EN's first disclosures coverage to put the molecules front and center
cen.acs.org/pharmaceutic...

If you can't be bothered to actually write the peer review yourself why should the reviewee have to listen to it? Why write anything at all, ever? If you don't have enough time, fight for better working conditions instead of faking your work

Ok here it is - out of 44 FDA approvals this year, 31 are small molecules (70%), 26 of those are oral drugs (84%), 22 of them are chiral (71%). This is the largest number and percentage of chiral FDA approved molecules in a single year. Fitusiran is not a small molecule, bonus.

I don't want to gush about my own paper too much but Alex did such an amazing job - this paper has everything: a huge scope including HTE demonstration from boronic acids, some really creative mechanistic experiments and a cherry-on-top computational study that helped us sort it all out. Enjoy!

Just in time for the new year - we show that you can make either isomer of N-aryl pyrazole selectively from a single TDSO. We really believe in the power of these wacky heterocycles.

chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr...

Excellent work by superstar Alex Fanourakis, in collab with Osvaldo Gutierrez and J&J

I just taught my lecture course on mid-20th c US history, which starts with Harding and concludes with Nixon.

For the first time, I had to pause and stress that those scandals were actually shocking at the time and, what’s more, that Americans actually demanded people be held accountable.

"Schools must adopt effective filters to block inappropriate or misleading content."

What filters block misleading content from ChatGPT? Is there a "no disinfo" or "no faked citations" or "no hallucinations" filter?

There is not. This is poisoned tech. You have to block the entire product.

Charlie Brown also invented the alkyne zipper reaction, look it up

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkyne_...

suspect a big reason why many academics and others who work in areas where getting facts RIGHT is key are disinterested in using LLMs for research:

they’ve tried it, they keep noticing major errors in output, and they conclude that having to verify all that doesn’t actually save them time.

As a former process chemist, yes. You get such 3am calls such as “There’s yellow foam overflowing out of the vessel, what do we do?” Or “We accidentally charged the vermiculite packing into the vessel along with the hydride reagent, it’ll be okay right?”

U.S. plans to stop recommending most childhood vaccines, defer to doctors The plan, which is not finalized, suggests children get fewer shots and shifts to a model telling parents to consult doctors to make their own vaccine choices.

makes me want to chew glass wapo.st/4aXfzn5

Ethanium - Wikipedia

Maybe they couldn't figure out how to do the positive charge on a license plate:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanium

Nitrogen deletion made easier✏️ Novel N-(benzyloxy)-N-(pivaloyloxy)benzamides enable one-step #deamination & deaminative functionalization of amines🔬 Improved derivatives by Mark @levinchem.bsky.social show faster kinetics & higher yields, shedding light on stereoelectronic effects

👉 buff.ly/c0hBrru