Fall/Winter 2022 Alumni Magazine

from Fall/Winter 2022 Alumni Magazine

Fall/Winter 2022 Alumni Magazine

Building up our Faculty: New Positions and New Faces

The Department of Chemistry is pleased to announce eight faculty members been promoted this academic year (2022-2023).

James Cahoon has been a member of the UNC Chemistry faculty since 2011. His work at UNC in nanomaterials/nanowire synthesis, solar and thermal energy, and photonics has awards such as Hettleman, an NSF CAREER Award, a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Cottrell Scholar Award, and a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering. He has also served as the UNC Director for the Research Triangle Nanotechnology Network (RTNN) and the Director of the Chapel Hill Analytical and Nanofabrication Laboratory (CHANL). He was promoted to full Professor as of July 1, 2022.

Jillian Dempsey has been a member of the UNC Chemistry faculty since 2012. Her work at UNC in inorganic spectroscopy and solar energy conversion has awards such as the Harry Gray Award for Creative Work in Inorganic Chemistry by a Young Investigator, a Dalton Transactions UC Berkeley Lectureship, an Inter-American Photochemical Society Young Investigator Award, a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Hettleman Prize, an NSF CAREER Award, and a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering. She is currently Director of Undergraduate Studies at UNC Chemistry and the Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor. She was promoted to full Professor as of July 1, 2022.

Yosuke Kanai has been a member of the UNC Chemistry faculty since 2011. His work at UNC in theoretical/computational chemistry, chemical and material physics, condensed matters, and first-principles electronic structure theory has landed him awards such as the Pariser Global Lectureship for Innovation in Physical Sciences, a DOE INCITE Award, and an Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in Computational Chemistry. He has also served as a term member of the Chemistry faculty at Duke University and as a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. He was promoted to full Professor as of July 1, 2022.

Alex Miller has been a member of the UNC Chemistry faculty since 2012. His work at UNC in energy catalysis, synthetic organometallic chemistry, and metal-ligand cooperation has garnered awards such as the Carlyle Sitterson Award for Teaching First- Year Students, an NSF CAREER Award, a Sloan Research Fellowship, a an Emerging Investigator Lectureship, a Organometallics Distinguished Author Award, and he was named to Forbes "30 Under 30" Energy" list. He has also served as the Director for Graduate Studies at UNC Chemistry and as an Editorial Advisory Board Member of Chemical Communications and Organometallics. He was promoted to full Professor as of July 1, 2022.

Andrew Moran has been a member of the UNC Chemistry faculty since 2007. His work at UNC in spectroscopy and dynamics in condensed phases and nonlinear optics has been recognized by awards such as an NSF CAREER Award. He has had over 75 papers published that have been cited over 3,300 times. He was promoted to full Professor as of July 1, 2022.

Frank Leibfarth has been a member of the UNC Chemistry faculty since 2016. His work at UNC in polymer science, organic synthesis, and continuous flow chemistry has received many awards and recognitions such as Hettleman Award, Thieme Chemistry Journal Award, a Tanner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, an NIH Maximizing Investigators Research Award, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Cottrell Scholar Award, a Beckman Young Investigator Award, an NSF CAREER Award, and a PMSE Young Investigator Award. He was also named as one of the "Brilliant 10" early career scientists by Popular Science and among the "Talented 12" by Chemical & Engineering News, and gave the UNC Winter Commencement Speech in 2021. He was promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure as of July 1, 2022.

Leslie Hicks has been a member of the UNC Chemistry faculty since 2013. Her work at UNC in proteomics, posttranslational modifications, and mass spectrometry has been recognized by awards such as an SfRBM Mentoring Excellence Award, a William C. Friday Award for Excellence in Teaching, a WCC Rising Star Award, an Agnes Fay Morgan Research Award, an Eli Lilly Young Investigator Award, a Robert J. Cotter New Investigator Award, an NSF CAREER Award, and a Arthur C. Neish Young Investigator Award. She has also served as the UNC Chemistry co-chair for the Swell Committee. She was promoted to Chancellor's Science Scholars Term Distinguished Professor as of July 1, 2022. The CCS Professorship bestows special recognition for her exemplary research and teaching record.

Domenic Tiani has been a member of the UNC Chemistry faculty since 2003. His work at UNC in chemistry education and lab curriculum development has led him to be both a faculty advisor for the UNC Medical School and an Undergraduate Advisor for the Chemistry Department. He has served as a Covenant Mentor for Carolina Covenant Scholars, and Continues to be a mentor in the Carolina Student Transfer Excellence Program. He continues to teach first year chemistry, sophomore analytical methods, and intermediate analytical chemistry. He was promoted to Teaching Professor as of July 1, 2022.

Joining us from North Carolina State University, Erin Baker brings more than 20 years’ experience. Before working at NCSU, she spent almost 13 years as part of Dr. Richard Smith’s lab at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, first as a postdoctoral researcher and then a research scientist. She received her Ph.D from the University of California, Santa Barbara and her Bachelor’s degree from Montana State University. The list of her awards and honors is extensive, including the 2022 ASMS Biemann Medal, the 2022 Curt-Brunee award, a Spring 2021 Impact Scholar, and the ACS Rising Star award.

Dr. Baker has over 150 publications, with almost 40 in the last 4 years alone. A strong tenant of her lab is respect and inclusion, demonstrated by the success of many of her students. The Baker lab has been actively using multidimensional separation techniques such as solid phase extractions, liquid chromatography, ion mobility spectrometry, and mass spectrometry to evaluate molecules present and changing in biological and environmental systems. These analyses allow the assessment of both xenobiotic and endogenous molecular changes to probe the perturbations occurring. Some of the ongoing research projects include the development of high-throughput analyses to study numerous samples in a short time period as well as informatics studies to evaluate and connect the complex multi-omic data with available phenotypic data. Read more about their work at her lab’s webpage, on her Google Scholar and LinkedIn pages, or follow her on Twitter for more exciting news about her research.

The latest addition to UNC Chemistry’s Teaching Faculty, Jade Fostvedt hails from the University of California Berkeley where she received her Ph.D in inorganic chemistry and worked as an Instructor underneath Dr. John Arnold. She received her Bachelor’s Degree from the University of South Dakota. While at UC Berkeley, her efforts at teaching and research have been recognized with awards such as the Chancellor’s Fellowship for Graduate Study, the Teaching Effectiveness Award, an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and the Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award. Her specialties in teaching lay in general and inorganic chemistry.

Dr. Fostvedt has done a significant amount of outreach, such as working with Community Resources for Science and her Science at Home videos during the pandemic. As a teaching professor, she aims to help students develop and follow their own passions through chemistry. Dr. Fostvedt's latest publications can be found on her Google Scholar page, and more information about her work at her LinkedIn profile.

Megan Jackson joined the faculty on July 1st as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. Dr. Jackson received her B.S. degree from California Institute of Technology, where she conducted research in the lab of Dr. Harry Gray. She completed her Ph.D. in the lab of Dr. Yogesh Surendranath at MIT as a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellow. She then joined the laboratory of Dr. Jeffrey Long at UC Berkeley, supported by an Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellowship and a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program Award.

Her postdoctoral work focused on controlling the materials properties of metal–organic frameworks, including morphology, surface chemistry, and defect chemistry. At UNC, the Jackson Lab will use tools from electrochemistry, materials chemistry, and inorganic chemistry to bring bottom-up design principles to heterogeneous electrocatalysis for energy conversion. Keep up with the latest in the Jackson lab by following her Twitter account or by reading about her latest publications on her Google Scholar page and LinkedIn page.

Huong Kratochvil joins us from the University of California at San Francisco, where she spent 6 years as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Dr. William DeGrado’s lab. She received her Ph.D in Physical Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin. She has been previously awarded an NIH Pathway to Independence Award, the Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA F32 Postdoctoral Fellowship, and been named an Intersections Science Fellow. She was heavily involved with STEM DEI work at all of her previous institutions.

At UNC, the Kratochvil's lab will tackle questions of channel/transporter structure and function and key protein-protein interactions in immunology through protein design strategies. Please see more about Dr. Kratochvil's previous work on her LinkedIn profile and her Google Scholar page, and keep up to date with the latest happenings in her lab on her Twitter.

Fall/Winter 2022 Alumni Magazine

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