February 18, 2022: Emmanuel Maloba(graduate
member of the Maleczka group) was
awarded a 2022 Pfizer
Travel Award from the Committee
on Minority Affairs of the ACS. The
award comes with a $2000 stipend to support
Emmanuel’s travel to the spring
ACS National meeting where he is scheduled
to give an oral presentation entitled, “Studies on
[1,2]-carbon to carbon silyl migration of
α-hydroxy allyl silanes: A new access to α-silyl
ketones and aldehydes”. As part of the award
he has also been invited to a reception honoring
the 50th Anniversary of the National Organization
for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists
and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE)
being hosted by the he ACS Office of Diversity,
Equity, Inclusion and Respect (DEIR).
Emmanuel has also been asked to present a poster
on his research .
February 16, 2022: Arzoo
Chhabra(graduate
member of the Maleczka group) is awarded
a summer internship at Zoetis.
February 11, 2022: Professor Rob Maleczka is appointed
to the ACS
Committee on Publications (2022–2024).
January 26, 2022: Professor Rob
Maleczkaelected
a Fellow of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS).
September 10, 2021:
MSU Chemistry, UC Berkeley, and Southern University
were Beyond
Benign's three Green Chemistry Education
Challenges Awardees for 2021. Professor Rob Maleczka served as the
PI on MSU’s grant, entitled
“Transformation of MSU’s large enrollment
undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory
course: Beta-testing of new green chemistry
project-based labs” will help in the development
of green chemistry labs for CEM 255. Drs.
Melanie Cooper, James (Ned) Jackson, Chrysoula
Vasileiou and Mengqi (Veronica) Zhang at were other
key participants as is Dr. Elizabeth Day (now at UTEP).
August 22, 2021: Badru-Deen Barry, Arzoo Chhabra,
Emmanuel Maloba, and Thomas Oleskey
(graduate members of the Maleczka Group) gave research
presentations at the 2021 ACS Fall National Meeting.
Emmanuel's poster was also selected for Sci-Mix.
July 30, 2021: Badru-Deen Barry successfully defended his Ph.D.
thesis. Badru-Deen has accepted an instructor
position at Kalamazoo College.
July 28, 2021: Cliff Yang (REU student from Hillsdale College in
the Maleczka group) presented a research poster entitled
"One-pot cyanation of pyridines via iridium-catalyzed
C-H borylations" at the 11th annual Mid-Michigan
Symposium for Undergraduate Research Experiences
(Mid-SURE 2021).
July 28, 2021: Jose (Pepe) Montero successfully defended his
Ph.D. thesis. Pepe has accepted a post-doctoral
research associate position at Merck, in West Point, PA.
May 31, 2021: Professor Rob Maleczka's last day as
Chemistry Department Chair!
May 17, 2021: Nagham Almasraf receives a NatSci fellowship to
join the group as a summer undergraduate researcher,
where she will be studying an enzymatic approach to
optically active silanols.
May 1, 2021: Yilong (Deuca) Feng (undergraduate member of the
Maleczka group) receives his BS degree. Deuca will
attend the University of Texas, Arlington for graduate
school.
December 8, 2020: Badru-Deen Barryand Jose Montero (graduate
members of the Maleczka Group) receive Dissertation
Completion and Dissertation Continuation
Fellowships respectively.
November 23, 2020: Dr. Lamont Terrell (Ph.D. 2001) was named 2021
Chair-Elect of the American Chemical Society’s Division of
Organic Chemistry. He will serve as Chair in 2022
and as Past-Chair in 2023. After earning his Ph.D.
at MSU, Dr. Terrell was a Pfizer post-doctoral fellow at
Stanford, and then joined GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) as a
drug discovery chemist. Dr. Terrell currently heads
GSK's Research & Development Early Talent and
University Diversity efforts. He previously served
the Division as an elected member-at-large from
2018-2020. Dr. Terrell becomes the first
African-American elected Chair during the Organic
Chemistry Division’s 110 year history.
August 17, 2020: Jose Montero (graduate member of the Maleczka
Group) gave a research presentation at the 2020 ACS Fall
Virtual National Meeting.
June 8, 2020: Jose Montero (graduate member of the Maleczka
Group) was selected for Dow's 2020 BEST
program, which will be held virtually July 28–31,
2020.
May
5, 2020: Austin King (undergraduate member of the
Maleczka group) receives his BS degree. Austin
will attend MSU for graduate school.
April 28, 2020: Jose Montero (graduate member of the Maleczka
Group) was selected for an internship at GlaxoSmithKline
(GSK)
April 21, 2020: Jose Montero (graduate member of the Maleczka
Group) was selected for 2020 Graduate
Research Symposium, which will be held at the
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM July 23–26,
2020.
February 5, 2020: Austin King (undergraduate member of the
Maleczka group), President of the MSU Chemistry Club,
along with Michael Schwaintz, Joseph Hendrain, and
Natasha Perry led the Club to victory in the Battle
of the Chemistry Clubs Competition which was held
on Saturday February 1, 2020. Clubs from ten
universities participated in the day’s events. The
morning events consisted of Element Trivia, Obstacle
Courses, and IUPAC Naming. MSU dominated in all
categories by taking first place in the rankings after
the morning events were over. MSU’s club continued to
succeed in the afternoon at the Great Titration Race,
and in timed events which tested their knowledge of
density laws and visible light spectra. They then moved
on to the Final Jeopardy round and won First Place in
the competition!
December 16, 2019: Badru-Deen Barry(graduate member of the
Maleczka Group) receives the Rogowski Chemistry Graduate
Fellowship.
December 8, 2019: Dr. Nicole (Torres) Knight (PhD 2009) was elected to the Executive Committee of the ACS'
Division of Organic Chemistry. Nicole is a research scientist at
Dow. Her term will run from 2020–2022 and she
will serve as a Member-at-Large.
November 23, 2019: Professor Rob Maleczka
served as an invited panel member on "Becoming a
Faculty Entrepreneur" at the Michigan AGEP Alliance
2019 fall conference.
November 4, 2019:
Our recent JACS (Montero Bastida, M.; Oleskey, T. J.;
Miller, S. L.; Smith, M. R., III; Maleczka, R. E., Jr. J.
Am. Chem. Soc. 2019, 141, 15483)
article, along with the a JACS article from the Phipps'
group at Cambridge (published back-to-back) on using
steric shielding to attach boron to an aromatic rings’
remote para position is covered by Chemistry
World.
August 15, 2019: Badru-Deen Barry(graduate member of the
Maleczka Group) receives the David and Sara Taft
Graduate Fellowship.
July 15, 2019: Jonathan Dannattsuccessfully
defended his Ph.D. thesis. Jonathan has accepted a
faculty position at the University of Dallas.
June 23, 2019: Jonathan Dannatt, Badru-Deen Barry(graduate members of the Maleczka Group) and Professor Rob Maleczkamade poster presentations at the 46th National
Organic Symposium held in Bloomington, IN.
June 14, 2019: Badru-Deen Barrysuccessfully defended
his M.S. thesis. Badru-Deen will continue in the
Ph.D. program.
June 4, 2019: Emmanuel Maloba, Jose Montero (graduate
members of the Maleczka Group) and Professor Rob Maleczkamade research presentations at the 50th ACS
Central Regional Meeting (CERM) held in Midland, MI.
May 30, 2019: Fangyi Shensuccessfully defended
her Ph.D. thesis. Fangyi has accepted an academic
specialist position position at MSU.
May 3, 2019: Lauren Kotsull (undergraduate member of the
Maleczka group) receives her BS degree. Lauren
will attend Wayne State for graduate school.
May 3, 2019: Austin King (undergraduate member of the
Maleczka group)
has been awarded a prestigious Summer
Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) by the
ACS Division of Organic Chemistry, which is sponsored by
Merck & Janssen.
Austin’s project is titled Isolation of Asymmetrical
Double-Decker Oligomeric Silsesquioxanes which is part
of a collaboration with Professor Andre Lee (Chem. Eng.
and Materials Science). He is studying new synthetic
routes to asymmetrically corner capped double-decker
silsesquioxane nanoparticles.
November 29, 2018: Professor Rob Maleczka
was named an Honored Professor of 'Overseas Expertise
Introduction Center for Green Pharmaceuticals
Discipline Innovation (111 Center)' Zhejiang
University of Technology, China (2018–2021).
July 25, 2018: Fangyi Shen (graduate member of the Maleczka
Group) presented her work at the 2018 Biennial Conference on Chemical
Education (BCCE) held at the University of Notre Dame
in South Bend, IN.
July 10, 2018: Chathurika (Ruwi) Jayasundarasuccessfully defended her Ph.D. thesis. Ruwi
has accepted a position at Proctor & Gamble
June 25, 2018: Chathurika (Ruwi) Jayasundara
(graduate member of the Maleczka Group) and Dmitrijs Sabasovs' (post-doc
in the Smith group) paper on "Cobalt-Catalyzed C–H
Borylation of Alkyl Arenes and Heteroarenes Including
the First Selective Borylations of Secondary Benzylic
C–H Bonds" was recognized as a "Most Read Article" of
the month by Organometallics.
June
25, 2018: Jose Montero (graduate member of the Maleczka
Group) received a travel award to support
his attendance at the fall National Meeting of the
American Chemical Society held in Boston, MA.
Jose's poster and that of Jonathan Dannatt were
also selected for Sci-Mix, which is held on the first
evening of the meeting.
May 1, 2018: Jonathan Dannatt (graduate member of the Maleczka
Group) was selected to present his work at
the upcoming Graduate
Research Symposium (GRS), which is scheduled for
July 26-29, 2018 on the campus of Indiana University
in Bloomington, IN.
January 25, 2018: Damith Perera (graduate member of the Maleczka
Group and post-doctoral associate at Pfizer, La Jolla) is the first author on a paper in Science
that describes a platform for automated nanomole-scale
reaction screening and micromole-scale synthesis in
flow.
January 22, 2018: Professor Rob Maleczka
was invited to join the National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering and Medicine Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Established in 1998,
the Chemical
Sciences Roundtable was created to be a neutral
source of communication between all segments of the
chemical sciences community, a major part of U.S.
industry, employment and trade. Maleczka will join a
prestigious group of leaders from the chemistry and
chemical engineering fields as well as government
representatives.
January 15, 2018: During the National Conference of the
National Organization for the Professional Advancement
of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE), Kenyetta
Smith (undergraduate member of the Maleczka
group) was one of only four students to receive the
2017 American Chemical Society (ACS) Student Exchange
Award. Ms. Smith was recognized for a
combination of achievements, including her NOBCChE
abstract submission, peer-reviewed publication record,
and campus/community involvement. This award includes
travel and lodging costs to a future ACS Regional or
National meeting, as well as a plaque that she
received at the NOBCChE Awards Ceremony.
November 8, 2017: Professor Rob Maleczka
delivered the keynote address at Go Green to Go
Gold, the ACS student affiliate symposium held
at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI.
April 2, 2017: Chathurika (Ruwi) Jayasundara
(graduate member of the Maleczka Group) presented her work at the spring National Meeting of the
American Chemical Society held in San Francisco, CA.
December 8, 2016: Professor Rob Maleczka
was elected to Treasurer of the American
Chemical Society's Division of Organic Chemistry.
He will serve as treasurer elect in 2017 and then
Treasure from 2018-2021. Dr. Luis
Sanchez (PhD 2010), an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at
Niagara University, was elected to the Executive Committee of the
American Chemical Society's Division of Organic
Chemistry. His term will run from 2017-2019 and he
will serve as a Member-at-Large.
November 9, 2016: Kenyetta Smith (undergraduate
member of the Maleczka group) presented her work at
the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority
Students held in Tampa, FL.
August 14, 2016: Damith Perera (graduate member of the Maleczka
Group) received a Dissertation Completion
Fellowship from the MSU College of Natural
Science.
April 27, 2016: Chathurika (Ruwi) Jayasundara
(graduate member of the Maleczka Group) was selected to present her work at the
upcoming Graduate Research Symposium, which is
scheduled for July 28-31, 2016 on the campus of Bryn
Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, PA.
April 14, 2016: Fangyi Shen (graduate member of the Maleczka
Group) was been selected as one of the 2016-2015
FAST (Future
Academic Scholars in Teaching) Fellows by the
Graduate School and the MSU Center for the Integration
of Research, Teaching, and Learning.
December 14, 2015: Professor Rob Maleczka
has been elected to the Executive Committee of the
American Chemical Society's Division of Organic
Chemistry. His term will run from 2016-2018 and
he will serve an alternative councilor for the
Division.
November 7, 2015: Professor Rob Maleczka
delivered an invited lecture as part of the Frontiers
in Chemistry Seminar Series sponsored jointly by
Western Michigan University, Kalexsyn and Zoetis.
November 5, 2015: Dr. Luis Sanchez (PhD 2010), an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at
Niagara University, has been appointed President-Elect of Gamma Sigma Epsilon, a Chemistry national honor society
founded in 1919.Dr. Sanchez will commence his term as
president of the society in 2017, the same year Gamma
Sigma Epsilon holds its 47th Biennial Conference at
Niagara University.
October 15, 2015: Jonathan Dannatt (graduate member of the Maleczka
Group) was admitted to MSU's NIH funded BEST
program.The
MSU BEST Program is focused on helping PhD
students in the a biomedical
science to develop the
necessary skills to forge a professional path
which suits his or her interest, skills, and
professional goals.
September 15, 2015: Professors
Mitch Smith and Rob Maleczka along with
their collaborator Dr. Jossian Oppenheimer (Dow
Chemical) have just received an NSF SusChem-GOALI
grant to support their work on sustainable C–H
borylations.
June 22, 2015: Aaron Baker (graduate member of the Maleczka
Group) has been selected as one of the
2015-2016 FAST (Future Academic Scholars in Teaching)
Fellows by the Graduate School and the MSU Center for
the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning.
June 9, 2015: Damith Perera (graduate member of the Maleczka
Group) was selected to present his work at the upcoming
Graduate Research Symposium, which is scheduled for July
23-26, 2015 on the campus of the St. Edward’s University
in Austin, Texas. The ACS Division of Organic
Chemistry's Graduate Research Symposium provides
an opportunity for 50-75 graduate students in organic
chemistry to interact with leaders from academia,
industry, various funding agencies, and
publishers. As the organizers report, competition
to attend this year's symposium was extremely strong
this year, which makes Damith's selection an impressive
accomplishment.
June
2, 2015:
Graduate students Gayanthi Attanayake and Chathurika
(Ruwi) Jayasundara were awarded MSU Graduate
School travel funds to present posters at the 44th
National Organic Chemistry Symposium (NOS). This
NOS will be held from Sunday, June 28 to Thursday,
July 2, 2015 on the campus of the University of
Maryland at College Park.
April
14, 2015:
Dr. Lamont Terrell (PhD 2001) has been
selected as the MSU College of Natural Science's
Council on Diversity and Community (CDC) seminar
speaker for fall 2015. Dr. Terrell will speak on
his current work as a drug discovery chemist at
GlaxoSmithKline as well as his pathway to that career.
April
6, 2015: Aaron Baker (graduate member of the Maleczka
group) has been selected as one of the 2015-2016 FAST
(Future Academic Scholars in Teaching) Fellows by the
Graduate School and the MSU Center for the Integration
of Research, Teaching, and Learning. As part of
this fellowship, Aaron plans to research the best
methods for assessing the effectiveness of how we
teach chemical safety at the undergraduate level.
March
31, 2015:
The MSU Chemistry Department held an alumni
reception at the 249th American Chemical
Society's National Meeting & Exposition held in
Denver from March 22-26. The theme of the
conference was the chemistry of natural
resources. The reception was held at the Rock
Bottom Restaurant and Brewery in Downtown Denver and
was attended by alumni attending the ACS meeting and
those who have relocated to the Denver area after
graduating from MSU.
October
20, 2014: Professor Rob Maleczka
delivered an invited lecture as part of the Greater
Indianapolis Organic Seminar Series sponsored
jointly by Dow AgroSciences, Eli Lilly, and IUPUI.
July 28, 2014:
Professor Rob Maleczka has been named a 2014
ACS Fellow. The ACS
Fellow program honors ACS members for
outstanding achievements in and contributions to
science, the profession, and ACS. Professor
Maleczka joins the Department's previously named ACS
Fellows, Melanie Cooper, Xuefei Huang, Paul Mantica
and Kennie Merz. Also among the 2014 fellows is
Professor Emmanuel P. Giannelis. Professor
Giannelis is the Walter R. Read Professor of
Engineering in the Materials Science and Engineering
Department of Cornell University. He earned his
Ph.D. in chemistry from MSU in 1985, working with
Professor Tom Pinnavaia. Other MSU Chemistry
alumni to have been previously named ACS Fellows
include Bridgette A. Barry (Post-doc, 1985), David E.
Bergbrieter (BS, 1970), Joseph A. Caruso (PhD, 1967),
Larry R. Dalton (BS, 1965), Mary Ann B. Meador (PhD,
1983), Patrick B. Smith (PhD, 1978), Claudia Turro
(PhD, 1992), and Bobby L. Wilson (PhD, 1976).
July
28, 2014:
Professor Rob Maleczka was named a Guest
Professor of the Zhengzhou Tobacco Research Institute
of CNTC for 2014–2018.
June
30, 2014: Damith Perera (graduate member of the Maleczka
Group) was awarded the Bronze GSK Award for developing
and successfully executing an 18 step synthetic route
to a GSK target. GlaxoSmithKline established
this award program to recognize valuable contribution
to company projects. Before Damith, only one
intern had ever won one of these GSK awards and Damith
was the only Intern so honored this year.
June
10, 2014: Damith Perera (graduate member of the Maleczka
Group) won the Best Poster Award at the
GlaxoSmithKline 2014 Chemistry Day, June 6th,
2014. His poster detailed recent synthetic work
that he has done in the GSK Research Triangle Park
Antiviral Chemistry Group. Damith’s
accomplishment is particularly impressive given that
his poster was compared to 35 other posters, most of
which were presented by permanent GSK employees with
much more experience.
May 5,
2014: Jason Unold (undergraduate member of the
Maleczka Group)received the Department of
Physiology's Undergraduate Research Award for his
studies on catalytic borylations carried out in the
Maleczka and Smith labs.
April
7, 2014:
Professor Rob Maleczka was namedIllinois
Wesleyan University's Hess Lecturer.
February
14, 2014: Rosario Amado (graduate member of the Maleczka
Group) was awarded an internship in the medicinal
chemistry group at GlaxoSmithKline, Research Triangle
Park, NC. Rosario will work with Dr. Jun Tang in
the HIV DPU group. This group is is focused on
the discovery and advancement of novel small molecule
drug candidates for the treatment, prevention and cure
of HIV/AIDS and related immunological dysfunction.
May
23, 2013:
Professors Mitch Smith and Rob Maleczka
along with their collaborators Drs. Shane Krska and
Peter Maligres recently received the 2013 Merck
Technology Symposium's Technology Collaboration Award
for their work on high throughput optimization of
Ir-catalyzed C-H borylations. Sean Preshlock and
Behnaz Ghaffari were among the MSU students who
participated in the award winning work.
May 9,
2013: Rosario Amado (graduate member of the Maleczka
Group) was selected to present her work at the
upcoming Graduate Research Symposium, which is
scheduled for July 25-28, 2013 on the campus of the
University iof Deleware. The ACS Division of
Organic Chemistry's Graduate Research Symposium
provides an opportunity for 50-75 graduate students in
organic chemistry to interact with leaders from
academia, industry, various funding agencies, and
publishers.
March
11, 2013:
Professor Rob Maleczka has been selected as
the recipient of the 2013 Meritorious Faculty Award by
the College of Natural Science Alumni Association
(CNSAA). The CNS Meritorious Faculty Award is
presented annually to a faculty member who has
demonstrated excellence in the areas of teaching and
research.
April 16, 2012: Fangyi Shen
(Maleczka lab) and Hongtu
Zhang (Smith lab) presented posters at this
year's University Undergraduate Research & Arts
Forum.
March 12, 2012:
The College of
Natural Science Alumni Association (CNSAA) Board of
Directors has selected Dr. Bobby L. Wilson, Ph.D., as the recipient
of the 2012 Outstanding Alumni Award. Dr. Wilson
was nominated by Dr. Robert
Maleczka.
October 28, 2011:
Professor Robert Maleczka has
been elected as a Member-at-Large to the Executive
Committee of the American Chemical Society's Division of
Organic Chemistry. His term will run from
2012–2014.
October 28, 2011: Damith Perera's
poster entitled “Cross-Couplings that Avoid the
Preparation of Haloaromatics: The Development of a One-
Pot C–H Activation/Borylation/Suzuki Reaction with
Immidazolylsulfonates as the Electrophilic Partner”
earned second place honors in the poster competition
held at Green Up the 3rd Michigan Green Chemistry
Conference. This conference took place in Ann
Arbor on October 27. Damith's poster was
co-authored by Professors Mitch Smith and Rob Maleczka,
as well as Jennifer Albaneze-Walker, Process Research
and Development, Merck Inc., Rahway NJ.
June 9, 2010:
Professor Rob
Maleczka's NSF grant entitled "GOALI: C-H Bond
Activation and Functionalization Methods for Medicinal
and Process Chemistry," was recommended for funding by
the Division of Chemistry. This grant is joint
with Professor Mitch
Smith and researchers at Merck. It is
also supported by the ACS Green Chemistry Institute's
Pharmaceutical Roundtable.
June 10, 2008:
At the Boron in
the America's XI Conference held June 4-8th in St.
Louis, Professor Mitch
Smith received the Distinguished Service in
Boron Science Award, At the same conference Venkata A. Kallepalli
won 1st place for the best oral presentation by a
graduate student. Lastly, Michigan State University was
announced as the host of Boron in the America's XII,
which will occur in 2010.
June 10, 2008:
Professor Mitch Smith and
Professor Robert
Maleczka were awarded the EPA
Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award, as
was SiGNa Chemistry, a company cofounded by Jim Dye with
ongoing participation by Ned Jackson's research group.
July 13, 2007:
Professor Rob Maleczka and Mitch Smith have
received a $100,000 grant from the Pharmaceutical
Roundtable of the Green Chemistry Institute, a
division of the American Chemical Society. The grant
will be used to further their work that can be used to
promote green engineering practices in the
pharmaceutical industry.
September 8, 2006: Rob Maleczka and
Mitch Smith
received $1.38M, one of the 61 awards from the State of
Michigan 2006 21st Century Jobs Fund. The title of their
proposal was "Catalytic Boronate Ester Synthesis:
Developing New Commercial Building Blocks for Drug
Discovery."
February 27, 2006: Shavon Ford
(Senior Chemistry Major and undergraduate member of the
Maleczka Group) was one of only 23 students from around
the country to receive a Pfizer Summer Undergraduate
Fellowship in Synthetic Organic.