“You may plant your land for six years and gather its crops. But during the seventh year, you must leave it alone and withdraw from it. The needy among you will then be able to eat just as you do, and whatever is left over can be eaten by wild animals. This also applies to your vineyard and your olive grove.” (Exodus 23:10–11).

I have been at the University of Kansas since July 2018, and it is time for me to assess what I managed to accomplish since then. The upcoming period, the so-called terminal year, will be dominated by the lab wind-down operations and will not add much to the accomplishments below. But who knows!

My accomplishments at KU can be organized in several, not mutually exclusive, categories: research and discoveries, student successes, culture.

Research and Discoveries

My group and I published eight papers on which I am the corresponding author and another three in which I and other group members are co-authors. Additional three papers from collaborations with chemistry department faculty are forthcoming, as are two papers from my own group, for a total estimate of 16 papers with KU affiliation. We also published a patent.

I gave about 30 talks at various conferences, primarily American Chemical Society national and regional meetings, and departmental seminars across the United States, and I presented posters at Gordon Conferences (three times) and at Tetrahedron Symposium (two times).

Main discoveries we have made are in the area of new photochemical reaction development. Among these:

  • New method for making azetidines by a Norrish-Yang reaction of protonated amines
  • Sequence of reactions for making non-natural complex amines (cycloheptatriene-lactone-azetidines)
  • Sequence of reactions for making a collection of spiroindane pyrrolidines
  • New Ni-catalyzed method for making spiroindane pyrrolidines
  • New photochemical decarbonylative formation of simplest ylides and their synthetic utilization for making pyrrolidines and tetrahydrofurans
  • Literature correction and method development for De Mayo-like reaction with twisted intramolecular charge transfer state
  • Development of catecholato silicates as radical donors using direct irradiation with visible light
  • Development of in situ monitoring of photochemical reaction with EPR for detection of free radicals
  • Development of several reaction kinetics monitoring schemes
  • Discovery of four new bioactive compounds by the application of “cell painting” annotation experiment
  • Progress on multiple myeloma-toxic benzoylating compound
  • Development of methionine-reactive oxaziridines with clickable handles
  • Progress on SipD binders synthesis

The robustness of these discoveries has been assured by heavy reliance on spectroscopy. The group became very proficient in routinely using multidimensional NMR for characterization of molecule. We complemented, as often as possible, the experimental data with computational models of the structures and reactions we developed.

Collaborations have organically developed with the KU chemistry department – specifically, with the Elles lab on measuring the transient absorption spectra, with Carey Johnson on measuring the fluorescence lifetimes, with Hanson lab on the cheminformatic analyses, and potentially with Teator lab on radical polymerization initiation with catecholato silicates.

Students success

I had achieved the most notable success with undergraduate students.

  • Bryce Gaskins went to graduate school at Caltech, awarded Goldwater fellowship, NSF graduate research fellowship, McNair scholar, performed summer research with Vy Dong at UC Irvine and at Merck Research Labs in Boston, etc.
  • Zach Pearson got permanent position at UCSF Resource for Bioinformatics and Visualization
  • Elizabeth Miller, candidate for Goldwater and Astronaut
  • Ian Shire, Courtwright award for undergraduate research, Kleinberg award from KU Chemistry
  • Jax Rosekrans, Michelle & A.C. Buchanan Scholarship
  • Ambrosee Wilkinson, Frank Newby Physical Science Award

There were fewer graduate students that I mentored, but some of their successes have been very notable:

  • Manvendra Singh, Irsay-Dahle award, job at Arena Bioworks
  • Mauricio Bahena Garcia, Chancellor’s Fellowship, Dr. Gregory L. and Frances L. Lauver Medicinal Chemistry Scholarship by our Department and the Hodgie Bricke Memorial Scholarship by the KU Office of International Affairs, Fulbright scholar

Among the graduate students, I also advised Victor Fadare, Amar Kumar, Matthew McCurry, and Koki Takemoto. In all six graduate students for a total 15 years of graduate student advising. I have also advised two postdoctoral scholars (Sri Kolluru and Pawan Dotte), a research technician (Nathan Garza), and several PharmD students (Alhamza Hamza, Alyschia Gaffar, Cybelle Arrey, and Tanner Moore).

Culture

From the beginning, I kept a very detailed inventory system for samples and reagents in the lab by using a custom made ZLab environment. The experiments have been digitally stored on a shared drive, in associated folders encompassing the data relevant to each experiment. The instruments have been carefully maintained, fixed, and students have been trained on using them. Primarily, I maintained and thought about the GC-MS, vacuum pumps, custom-made potentiostat, fluorimeter (modified for polarized UV light experiments), spectrophotometers, automated microscopes, HPLC, inert atmosphere glovebox and solvent dispenser. My lab and I organized, catalogued, and stored around 10,000 historical samples from researchers at KU amassed over several decades.

The study sessions and tutorials for graduate students have mostly been organized on Saturdays. I tried to cover both chemical synthesis and data topics. We learned Python and MatLab. Each week I had 1-on-1 meetings with the graduate students and undergraduates as needed. I developed a course for the University Honors program. The course won the award as one of the top three honors seminars.

I taught nearly a thousand pharmacy students the basics of biochemistry (and chemistry, and math). I extensively relied on visualization tools like PyMol and on modeling in MatLab, Avogadro, Desmos, to allow exploration of formulas and structures.

I served on many committees, and I reviewed grants for several organizations, and manuscripts for numerous journals. I have been a member of around 30 theses and/or oral committees for graduate students from my own department, or from Chemistry, Molecular Biosciences, Pharmaceutical Chemistry, or Pharmacology and Toxicology departments.