Shauna Paradine

It was wonderful to return to my grad school stomping grounds and see what the White group (& especially team nitrene!) is up to 10 years later. Thanks so much for such a great visit!

HS chem class gave pts for product yields in labs, based on standard deviation from class average. Once made a product that could sublimate, labmate & I took care to ensure we didn't lose product while drying over weekend. Classmates didn't, lost most product. Guess who lost points for yield

This is why a lot of unis were telling researchers to stop spending money with the funding freeze, because the uni is essentially taking on debt if they're not getting reimbursements (my uni opted to take on that financial risk and told us to keep doing what we're doing).

Yeah your award notice is funds promised, but it's not disbursed to your uni in one chunk. Instead unis get a transfer weekly, biweekly, or monthly based on expenses incurred or obligated. So most of that grant money (unspent) is still sitting at the NIH or NSF, not at your uni.

The incredible @chemdiva.bsky.social Malika Jeffries-El!

Are you an undergrad or faculty with undergrads interested in materials chemistry and pchem? Interested in an international exchange opportunity? Check out this program led by my colleague!

My uni sends all faculty a list of religious/cultural holidays before the beginning of every academic year and advises them to not have exams or major assignments due on those days. No enforcement of course, but at least they're making us all aware.

University of Rochester Chemistry announces its 2025 International Student Summer Research (iScholar) Program: www.sas.rochester.edu/chm/undergra... Outstanding international undergraduate (or M.S.) students planning to pursue a PhD in Chemistry in the future are encouraged to apply.

Love the list! We may be organic chemists, but we do Pd & Cu catalysis and would love to be on this list 😊

Are you studying outside the US? Are you in an undergraduate or master's program and planning on a PhD? Are you interested in US-based summer research opportunities? Would you love to experience a Rochester summer (they are wonderful!)? Check out the iScholar Program here at UofR!
👉 bit.ly/4g3CWL0

One of the ways I start my talks is with an analogy between architecture and synthesis, because it highlights the creativity and artistry that's inherent to the field - it's a misconception that you are either creative or scientific, you can easily be both!

As a general rule I pay for everything for group events, and that definitely includes the goods for final defense celebrations. I know of this "student pays for their party" practice and it feels so wrong to me.

carved pumpkin with zombie hand and tombstone, and part of cadaverine, a diamine associated with the smell of rotting flesh, in view

carved pumpkin with cadaverine, a diamine associated with the smell of rotting flesh, and zombie hand in view

Happy Halloween! My pumpkin this year features cadaverine, a molecule associated with the smell of...well, you can guess from the name 🧟

This is a great event and awesome opportunity for students interested in pharma!

Yes, and so far all of them (this may change) - includes an ACIE review that has held up with a pushpin so far. I'm also about to print off pics of all the co-authors from each paper to hang up with it (I like the idea of putting faces to the names on our papers)

Yes! They like contextualizing the science, whether it's the impact of findings on society or humanizing the science (I also like to share tidbits about the scientists who did the work I'm talking about).

The use of asymmetric hydrogenation for the commercial synthesis of L-DOPA is one that I share (among others)

We use the Silicycle cutter and it's worked well for us.

Time to make elderflower cordial over here!

Ligand control of regioselectivity in palladium-catalyzed heteroannulation reactions of 1,3-Dienes - Nature Communications Olefins are common starting points for syntheses as they are widely available and can often be functionalized twice in one step, but controlling the regioselectivity of these difunctionalizations rema...

Switch the site-selectivity of your carbofunctionalization reaction with this one weird ligand!
Lots of fun to build on this completely unexpected result, this project took us into data science and modeling to learn about the selectivity we were seeing. Check it out!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thank you for highlighting the paper, it was such a fun project 😊 A reminder that I need to post this to my own account too!

Love to see current and former students meeting each other at conferences! Dynamo 4th year grad student Cay at left and former undergrad Jisoo (who has been rocking it in @levinchem.bsky.social 's lab) at right, at the Heterocycles GRC

You should be either neutralizing the compound causing the smell in the hood (e.g. sulfides, thiols) or rinsing glassware in the hood and caring for the waste accordingly. If the glassware is still stinky after that I guess I'm stumped!

Sharing from that other place because this is actually important. Audrey Cameron is looking for deaf chemists to contact her.
ChemSky

x.com/aud2526/stat...

full disclosure: I feel strongly enough about this that I created a whole class on communication for chemists in my department

We really don't spend nearly enough time teaching students how to effectively communicate and it shows - and posters are often some of the worst offenders (and not just from us organic chemists). We really need to incorporate this more into our curricula

It's pretty ridiculous that students are only given the option to buy, especially since my institution rents regalia for the faculty every graduation (at no cost to us) - a rental market clearly exists!

If the smell is escaping your lab, that's a real problem - either a failure of lab ventilation, a spill, or negligence in handling a compound. So yes, I would worry.

My lab holds that if you're smelling a chemical, that's an exposure and should be avoided, even within the lab. Smelly compounds in particular we handle exclusively in hoods (in-hood rotovap, weighing compounds using sealed, tared vials, etc).

It's either "oh, I hated chemistry in high school" or "oh, you must be so smart" and I hate both of those responses for different reasons