Janis Louie is a Professor of Chemistry and Henry Eyring Fellow in the Department of Chemistry and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for the College of Science at the University of Utah. In the Hartwig laboratory, Janis developed some of the first palladium-catalyzed amination reactions between aryl halides and amines. She was an NIH postdoctoral fellow with Nobel Laureate Professor Robert H. Grubbs at Caltech where she developed iron catalysts for atom-transfer radical polymerization and ruthenium-catalyzed tandem reactions. Janis’ independent program focuses on catalysis with base metals, such as nickel and iron. Janis has been honored with a variety of awards including the American Chemical Society Cope Scholar Award, Camille Dreyfus-Teacher Scholar Award, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship Award, American Academy of Arts and Science Fellow, and the University of Utah College of Science Award for Teaching Excellence. She has recently become the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, which involves overseeing and implementing reforms in the CoS curriculum and building community among the faculty, staff, and students of the College of Science.

Grace Mann is Senior Director of Global Clinical Oncology at Corcept Therapeutics. In the Hartwig laboratory, Grace conducted some of the first etherifications of aryl halides and studies on the reductive eliminations to form carbon-heteroatom bonds. After finishing her Ph.D., she began postdoctoral studies in high-throughput experimentation at Los Alamos National Laboratory, followed by a year of teaching Chemistry at the University of Hong Kong. Her industry career began at Exelixis in Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Discovery and eventually transitioned to Clinical Development where compounds she first made in the lab were given to cancer patients in clinical trials. One compound, Cometriq®/Cabometyx®, was later FDA-approved. Grace then served in roles at Onyx and Puma during which time she contributed to various stages of development and/or approval of oncology drugs Kyprolis® and Nerlynx®. She continues to develop drugs so cancer patients can have other options to fight their disease.

Clare Muhoro is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Towson University and Senior Science Partnerships Advisor at USAID. In the Hartwig laboratory, Clare studied titanium-catalyzed hydroborations of alkenes and alkynes and prepared the first borane sigma-complexes. Interested in a career as a faculty member at a primarily undergraduate institution, Clare accepted a position at UC Santa Barbara teaching introductory chemistry to gain experience teaching large classes before pursuing faculty positions. After 8 years on the faculty at Towson, she began to work with USAID as an American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) fellow in Science, Diplomacy and Development. In this position, she managed science and technology partnerships to support collaborative research in Pakistan and India. In her current USAID position, she leads a collaborative program in South Africa that has brought together government, academia, regional entities and the private sector to support innovative research that addresses transboundary water issues in Southern Africa.

Rebecca Green is a Research Associate at BMS. In the Hartwig laboratory Rebecca conducted collaborative research with the Dow Chemical Company and brought the amination of aryl halides to the realm of nickel-catalyzed chemistry. Rebecca developed practical coupling of ammonium salts with aryl halides to form primary anilines, as well as the nickel-catalyzed coupling of primary amines. Rebecca was interested in applying catalysis with organometallic complexes to the large-scale synthesis of pharmaceuticals and joined the BMS process chemistry group after finishing her Ph.D. degree. Most recently, she collaborated with John and a few other former group members to write a chapter for the 100th volume of Organic Reactions on the amination of aryl halides.

Dan Weix recently accepted a tenured faculty position at the University of Wisconsin. During his postdoctoral fellowship in the Hartwig laboratory, Dan worked on some of the first iridium-catalyzed asymmetric allylations of unstabilized enolates. Dan has risen like a meteor during his independent career studying catalytic methodologies for organic synthesis. He pioneered a new form of catalysis called “cross-electrophile” coupling, which couples two different organic electrophiles, often using a first-row metal catalyst. Dan was raised near Milwaukee and is thrilled to move to Wisconsin to join this top-flight chemistry program.

Jackie Murphy is a research scientist in the electronic materials division of a new company emerging from the Dow-DuPont merger. In the Hartwig laboratory, Jackie conducted studies on the borylation of alkanes and spearheaded the use of the borylation of arenes to generate a range of products from the combination of borylation and oxidative functionalization. After graduating from the Hartwig laboratory, she was an NIH postdoctoral fellow with Greg Fu at MIT studying enantioselective catalysis with chiral Lewis bases. She joined Dow Chemical company and worked on large scale production of polyolefins at their site in Houston TX. When Dow and DuPont recently merged, Jackie transferred to the electronic materials business at the Marlborough MA site, nearby where she was raised. With her ability to learn new science quickly Jackie joined this new venture and is looking forward to the opportunity to develop high-value materials.

Chen Cheng recently started as a medicinal chemist at Merck’s new site in South San Francisco. In the Hartwig lab, Chen discovered the first silylation of aryl C-H bonds with the arene as limiting reagent, and he designed and synthesized biodegradable silyl ether polymers from fatty acids. Chen was born and raised in Nanjing China and attended the world-renowned Nanjing Foreign Language School. He attended the University of North Carolina for his undergraduate degree, where he published a string of papers in JACS and Angew. Chem. with Maurice Brookhart before attending UC Berkeley and conducting his Ph.D. research in the Hartwig laboratory. Before the end of his second year, Chen discovered and published in Science his discovery of a rhodium system that catalyzed the silylation of arenes with the arene as limiting reagent and with remarkable steric sensitivity for the site of reaction. He then discovered an iridium catalyst for the same reaction that dramatically improved functional group compatibility. In parallel with this work on C-H bond functionalization he began to study the potential of silanes to serve as monomers to link fatty acids to form biodegradable polymers, and soon thereafter published the first paper from the Hartwig group on this topic. When choosing a career path, Chen was torn between academics, the startup space, and established pharmaceutical companies. When Merck Pharmaceuticals decided to open a new site in South San Francisco, they offered Chen a position as one of the first scientists at this site, and he decided that this opportunity would provide the best of all three worlds. He began his appointment at this exciting new facility in 2017.

Hanna Key just accepted a position as Assistant Professor at Davidson College, after working at or receiving offers from four of the top 15 liberal arts colleges in the US. Hanna was the first student in the Hartwig laboratory to conduct research on artificial metalloenzymes, and she established the experimental infrastructure in the group to conduct reserach with proteins. She designed and assembled artificial metalloenzymes, based on heme proteins, that contain an iridium-methyl unit in place of iron. Hanna published one paper in Nature, one in Science, one in ACS Central Science and two in JACS during her time at Berkeley, while simultaneously serving as Head Teaching Assistant for Organic Chemistry and receiving numerous teaching awards. She conducted postdoctoral research with Scott Miller at Yale on catalysis with metallopeptides, There, she cracked a longstanding group problem and published a communication in JACS in just one year before being recruited to return to her alma mater Grinnell College for a two-year teaching fellowship. With this experience, she received an offer from every school that interviewed her for a position in organic chemistry, and she will begin her tenure track position at Davidson this Fall.