Archives
February 2017
Yuan was born and raised in southwest China. In July 2016, he earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the National University of Singapore where he performed research on asymmetric base metal catalysis in Prof. Zhao Yu’s group. He joined the Brown group in September 2016 as a postdoctoral research fellow. His current research focus is in the area of Cu-catalyzed asymmetric difunctionalization of alkenes. In his spare time, he enjoys sleeping, playing basketball, swimming, and drinking.
“If little labour, little are our gains: Man’s fate is according to his pains” – Poor Richard
February 2017
Johannes was born in Idar-Oberstein, Germany. He attended Basel University, Switzerland, where he earned his B.Sc. in 2011. In 2012 he performed his Master’s research in the group of Professor Donna G. Blackmond at The Scripps Research Institute and obtained his M.Sc from Basel University. Before he started his PhD with Professor Thorsten Bach at TU München, he worked for the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research for 6 months. In 2016 he received his PhD for his work on C−H activation and pyrrole synthesis. In February 2017 he moved to Indiana University to work with Professor Brown on natural product synthesis as a postdoctoral fellow. Johannes is passionate about football (the one with the round ball), skiing and German beers.
“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.” − Albert Einstein
February 2017
Seewon was born and raised in Seoul, Korea and moved to Daejeon to attend KAIST for his undergraduate studies in Chemistry. As a graduate student in KAIST, he studied natural product synthesis with Prof. Hee-Yoon Lee. Then, he moved to Prof. Sukbok Chang’s group in KAIST as a postdoctoral scholar to investigate the hydrosilylation reactions. After two years, he moved to Prof. Seth Herzon’s group at Yale University to develop antibody-drug-conjugates (ADC) based on syntheses of natural product analogues for a year. He then joined Prof. Brown’s group at Indiana University to develop a transition metal-catalyzed difunctionalization of alkenes. Outside of the lab, he enjoys watching sports and traveling around the US.
“The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.” – Bruce Feirstein
March 2019
Dongshun grew up in Hangzhou, a beautiful city in China, and in 2012 he got a bachelor’s
degree in applied chemistry at Sichuan University. Afterwards, he attended the
Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry where he studied the total synthesis of complex alkaloids and
obtained his Ph. D. under the supervision of Prof. Dawei Ma in December 2017.
After one year as an assistant researcher in the Ma group, he joined the Brown group in
January 2019 as a postdoctoral research fellow, and his current research focuses on
enantioselective [4+2] cycloaddition. In his spare time, he enjoys watching movies,
playing billiards and games- king of glory, and learning to cook food.
You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.—Zig Ziglar
March 2019
Amit was born and had his early education in Rampurhat, Westbengal, India. He obtained
his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degree from Visva Bharati, Santiniketan. He completed his doctoral
studies in 2018 under supervision of Prof. Santanu Mukherjee at the Indian Institute of
Science (IISc), Bangalore where he focused on developing C-C and C-X bond forming
reactions using organocatalysts and quantum dots. After spending a few months as a research
associate in the Mukherjee lab, he joined the Brown group in Jan 2019 where he is currently
performing various C-H activation reactions using transition metal catalysts. He enjoys his
free time watching movies and spending time with family.
“I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing
something.” ― Richard P. Feynman
February 2017
November 2017
Pin Gao studied organic chemistry at Lanzhou University. He obtained his Ph.D. there in 2015 under the supervision of Prof. Yong-Min Liang, studying transition metal-catalyzed cyclization of enynes. He then joined the School of Science at Xi’an Jiaotong University as an assistant professor. His research involves the development of catalytic methods to construct C-Si bonds. In September 2017, he joined the Brown group at Indiana University as a visiting scholar. His research focuses on transition metal-catalyzed construction of C-B bonds. He enjoys playing basketball in his spare time.
“Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.”
-This is my quote
May 2022
Larissa is a visiting scholar from Germany and has recently joined the Brown lab to gain knowledge in C-H functionalization and alkene hydroboration. She received her B.Sc and M.Sc in biomedical chemistry from the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and is now a Ph.D candidate in the Frey group. Profound in the field of polyether synthesis and characterization, she aspires to combine the fields of macromolecular and photochemistry to find promising ways for polymer modification. In her free time she enjoys reading, practicing Kendo and playing videogames.
“We all make choices, but, in the end, our choices make us.” – Andrew Ryan, BioShock
February 2017
July 2017