Engle lab alum Josh Turnbull is featured in an article on the King’s College London website, which discusses his summer studentship and upcoming plans for graduate school. Congrats on your successes Josh, and best of luck at Berkeley! Click here for a link to the article.

Congratulations to postdoc Miriam O’Duill on winning the competitive TSRI Society of Fellows Spring Travel Award to fund her recent talk at the ACS Spring National Meeting in San Francisco, CA.

For the press release, click here. Way to go, Miriam!

For the second year running, TSRI hosted a group of students and educators from the North San Diego County Bridges to the Future Program, an NIH-sponsored collaborative program among CSU San Marcos, Palomar College, and MiraCosta College. The goal of the program is to prepare students from underrepresented ethnic and racial groups at community colleges for seamless transition to four-year colleges. Keary kicked off the half-day visit with an overview of research in the Engle lab. Students then participated in a series of lab tours and hands-on activities with the Ward, Lamia, Romesberg, Sharpless, and Engle labs.

In a manuscript appearing online today in Tetrahedron, John, Van, and Miranda report a new method to effect intermolecular N-alkylation of 2-pyridones using an alkene as the alkylating reagent. The reaction employs a directed nucleopalladation/protodepalladation strategy and functions with a range of 2-pyridones and related aza-heterocycles. Special congratulations to our undergraduate co-author, Miranda, who also just completed her undergraduate degree at UCSD! The manuscript is part of a special issue celebrating Prof. Ang Li’s 2017 Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award. Click here for a link to the manuscript. Way to go, team!

(not pictured: Miranda)

Congratulations to second-year graduate student Joe Derosa and former visiting undergraduate student Annabelle Cantu (CSU Long Beach) for being awarded 2017 NSF Graduate Research Fellowships. Bravissimo!

For a complete list of awardees, click here.
For TSRI’s write-up, click here.

In the Engle lab’s first paper of 2017, the team of Joe, Annabelle, Mark, Miriam, Josh, Zhen, and Daizy describe a new catalytic method to effect regio- and stereoselective addition of HCl to alkynes using a directed nucleopalladation strategy. The paper appears today in the Just Accepted section of J. Am. Chem. Soc. Well done, everyone! Special congrats to the three undergraduate co-authors, Annabelle, Mark, and Josh, as well as Daizy, the Engle lab’s first-ever high school student co-author! Click here for a link to the paper.

(not pictured: Annabelle, Josh, and Daizy)

The Engle lab bids farewell to Zichen (Forrest) Wang, who has completed his 6-month internship. After an inspiring and productive stay at Scripps, Forrest returns to Nankai University equipped with a group of lifelong friends, new chemistry knowledge, a refined appreciation for hamburgers, and improved laser tag skills.

Zichen (Forrest) Wang

As part of TSRI’s Science Saturdays program, The Engle group welcomed students from several San Diego area high schools to campus. Keary kicked off the morning with an opening lecture, titled “The Nuts and Bolts of Building Molecules,” and afterwards, the high school students in the audience made their way into various laboratories on campus for tours and activities. For a write-up, click here.

For the second straight year, the Engle lab hosted a group of high school teachers from across the United States through the MJ Murdock Charitable Trust – Partners in Science Program. The Partners in Science Program provides opportunities for high school teachers to work with investigators in academic labs or in labs associated with other non-profit institutions to bring the knowledge and experience back to classroom, promoting hands-on science education. Members of the Engle lab explained our group’s research, organized a series of hands-on activities, and even coaxed a few brave teachers into the glovebox.

The Engle lab is pleased to usher in 2017 by welcoming its newest postdoc, Sri Krishna Nimmagadda. Sri originally hails from Chirala, India, and completed his Ph.D. with Jon C. Antilla at the University of South Florida, where his research focused on the catalytic asymmetric synthesis using chiral phosphoric acids and alkaline earth metal phosphate complexes.