An announcement - I have just ended my first full week as a new postdoc at UNC Chapel Hill with the CHASE Solar Hub! I'm looking forward to working with everyone here to explore neat complexes/chemistries to make liquid fuels.

I was very excited to see my recent publication on electron transfer in copper complexes with @OlshanskyLab highlighted by a spotlight in J. Am. Chem. Soc. ! The structural dynamics common to coordination chemistry are simply incredible. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ja…

An older picture, but cool - purple iodine vapor over Mg turnings! The Mg goes from silvery to golden in color. I2 works really well to activate Mg(0) for the synthesis of Grignard reagents from alkyl/aryl halides.

A reminder that science (especially synthesis!) rewards patience. My Fe(II) complex was an oily mess yesterday night - left it overnight and came back to a large amount of red crystalline solid!

Plants are experts at transforming energy from the sun into energy they can use. University of Illinois researchers are learning from plants about the best ways to use catalysts and catalytic sites to transfer electrons. This could lead to better solar panels: chemistry.illinois.edu/news/2023-10-2…

Happy to ring in the new year with a publication! Check it out if you love Magic Green, kinetics, and dynamic complexes. @OlshanskyLab Chemistry at Illinois Inorganic Chemistry pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac…

Carboxylate Shift Dynamics in Biomimetic Co2(μ–OH)2 Complexes | Inorganic Chemistry pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac… DeLucia and Olshansky Inorganic Chemistry #cobalt #carboxylate #shift #Co2

Alright chemistry twitter, do y'all have any neat pictures of crystals? Would love to see them! This organic molecule crystallized nicely from the reaction - I tragically learned that it was light sensitive a few days later. I'm hoping for more (colorful) crystals soon!

This is cool stuff!

I went back to UIUC this weekend to meet up with some old friends and get hooded for my PhD with Alyssa DeLucia and Saman Fatima by @OlshanskyLab ! Nearly a year after I left, but better late than never! Photo credit to Alexandra DeLucia

Very happy to see this Forum article with @OlshanskyLab out now in Trends in Chemistry! In it we discuss how conformational dynamicity gives rise to emergent properties in coordination complexes. doi.org/10.1016/j.trec…

Metalloprotein design: Fatima et al report switchable artificial metalloproteins (swArMs) that reveal how external triggers can change the H-bonding microenvironment. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac… MaterialsResearchLab Beckman Institute at Illinois Indiana University Chemistry Department University of Michigan

Check out this neat paper by Matthew Goodwin on halide oxidation!

Chemistry is wild sometimes - I set up a reaction which is cleanly proceeding to a single product. The catch? There are 42 unique NMR features in the aromatic region of the H NMR spectrum and 28 of them belong to the product. That's a lot for a 2.5 ppm window!

Collected a crystal structure for a Ru complex today...6 minute data collection for a 0.77 angstrom structure with Mo radiation, I/sigma over 10. I'm shocked - used to much longer times for my first row complexes!

Conformational control over proton-coupled electron transfer in metalloenzymes nature.com/articles/s4157… A Review by Saman Fatima & Lisa Olshansky @OlshanskyLab Chemistry at Illinois

Hexa-valent nickel! Joe’s work unveiling a new valence state for nickel is (finally) published - out now in J. Am. Chem. Soc. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ja… chem.ox.ac.uk/article/the-fi… Oxford Chemistry Josef Boronski

A brief update on my end - I recently moved to Stony Brook to research Fe cyanide complexes! Really neat and colorful chemistry...looking forward to sharing it with folks soon.