It’s the season of giving and what better way to celebrate the holidays than with non stop outreach opportunities! First, we had the boss young scientists of BEWiSE hosted by Fleet Science come learn about organometallics. Then students from the distant lands of Palm Springs came to help us set things on fire. (This time no evacuation!)

The nickel team strikes again, with a final version of our nickel-catalyzed alkene 1,2-diarylation paper appearing online in final form at J. Am. Chem. Soc. (click here). Through identification of an effective electron-deficient olefin ligand, this catalytic system allow for use of simple commonly encountered primary, secondary, and tertiary amides as directing groups, including those that are native to various target compounds of interest. Additionally, this work represents one of the rare cases in 1,2-diarylation chemistry where an aryl boronic acid derivative can be used as the nucleophilic coupling partner. Congratulations to Joe, Roman, Van, and Malkanthi from the Engle lab and Steve and Martin from Bristol-Myers Squibb. Thanks to everyone involved for a great collaboration. In case anyone missed it, a pre-print of this work was published on ChemRxiv back in early November (click here).

We are excited to have the new post-doc ZhongLin Liu joining the team from the Li lab at SIOC. ZhongLin has already got started cleaning his hood, which has formerly housed post-doc DeWei and Professor Noah Burns as a graduate student. Welcome ZhongLin!

The Engle lab celebrated it’s 4th annual holiday party in style, with a great potluck, a lively white elephant gift exchange, and a fierce Mario Tennis/MarioKart competition on Keary’s new Nintendo Switch. Happy holidays from our lab family to yours! Here’s to a great 2018!

Vincent and Joe’s paper on three-component, nickel-catalyzed umpolung carboamination of alkenyl carbonyl compounds appears online today in final form at ACS Catalysis (click here). This unique transformation enables syn-selective delivery of nitrogen and carbon substituents of choice across an alkene and allows for formation of exceptionally hindered C(sp3)–C and C(sp3)–N bonds. It represents one of the few rare examples in which amine-directed N–O electrophiles (first used in two-component cross-couplings by Johnson) have been integrated into a nickel-mediated alkene functionalization process. It’s a special treat to highlight that the project lead, Vincent (now a grad student upstairs with Ryan Shenvi), performed this work as his senior-year undergrad research project while at UCSD. Props to Joe for great mentorship, and congrats to both authors! In case anyone missed it, a pre-print of this work was published on ChemRxiv back in early November (click here).

Our newest high school intern Matt joins us from San Diego High School and will be working with A.M.R (G3). Matt has found his new favorite piece of glassware, the rotavap cow, and can rotavap down 4 reactions at once. Welcome Matt!