2023/2024 Academic Year
4/11/24- Zach wins 2nd Place at USC Physical Sciences Industry Day!
4/7/24- Spring Beach Cleanup!
We hosted our spring beach cleanup today, where we had a competition of favorite beach cleanup tshirt! Each color competed for the most items collected! Light blue and pink shirt team won the day with 5,072 items picked up and a total collection of 17,685 (always a low estimate as people lose count). We have now collected over 200,000 items since we started!
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4/4/24- Congrats to Collette!
Big congrats to undergrad alum, who is now a second year grad student in Tim Swager's lab at MIT, Collette Gordon, on receiving a GRFP fellowship from NSF this year!
4/3/24- Congrats to Angelyn and Jessica!
Angelyn participated in our annual sprinkle reveal, where she used sprinkle colors on cupcakes to declare her choice of dental school.... Columbia University!!! In the same day, REU student, Jessica Bowen, defined her choice of UC Santa Barbara for graduate school in chemistry. We are so excited to watch what they do in grad school!
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3/27/24- New Student Office!
3/17/24- Megan and Nancy Head to ACS!
3/8/24- Congrats to Nancy!
Congrats to Nancy for receiving a Travel Award from the Division of Inorganic Chemistry of ACS!
2/5/24- Congrats to Ryan!
Congrats to Ryan for receiving SOAR funding for his research on chemical recycling of PET this semester!
1/18/24- First Tensile Tests!
We have been slowly getting our new instruments online up in the polymer characterization lab! 5 down... 3 more to go. We finally got our tensile tester online and tried several commercial polymer samples to learn about the method. Dana picked the winning sample for elongation at break, while Kai picked the worst sample.
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1/8/24- Welcome to New Group Members!
We are excited to welcome four new group members to the team this semester! Tyeshia, Mrityunjay and Ayon are new first year graduate students on the team. They will take on their training with fourth year grad students, Kai, Dana and Nancy, respectively, to get used to the lab before starting their independent project this summer. Ryan is a sophomore undergraduate student, who is excited to join Emma and Nancy on their project working on chemical recycling of PET. Welcome to the team and we look forward to your accomplishments in the lab!
12/19/23- Congrats to Angelyn!
Congratulations to Angelyn for receiving a Provost Fellowship to support her research for her last semester at USC!
12/15/23- Congrats to Angelyn!
Congratulations to Angelyn for being accepted to several dental schools! Stay tuned for our reveal for where she decides to go!
12/12/23- Congrats to Shelby!
Congratulations to Shelby for receiving a MITACS Fellowship to work with Prof. Chris Kozak at Memorial University this summer!
12/8/23- New Paper Out Now in Inorganic Chemistry!
Congratulations to Sophia and Kai their new manuscript on simplified catalysts for the polymerization of isoprene. In this study, Sophia found that activating two alkyls of a trialkyl f-element complex led to a highly active, yet uncontrolled polymerization of isoprene, as previously seen in the literature with other systems. We hypothesized that adding a commercially available neutral donor might help support these activated catalysts. Interestingly, most of the donors we tried killed catalytic activity. The winning donor turned out to be PPh3, which was surprising as monodentate phosphines have not been considered to be good ligands to f-elements. Read here to learn more: Link
11/27/23- New Paper Out Now in Inorganic Chemistry Frontiers!
Congratulations to Kai for spearheading this project in cyclodepolymerization and solvolysis of carbonyl-containing polymers. We were actually targeting a different chemical recycling pathway, but the catalysts Kai made had different intentions. This work was exciting because we were able to show that a controlled "unzip" cyclodepolymerization of some polymers could be realized. Additionally, high yields of cyclodepolymerization could be identified without a vacuum distillation strategy. Read here: Link
10/23/23- Chili Cook-off!
10/16/23- Welcome to our second round immersion student!
Big welcome to Ayon, who is immersing in our group for the next month!
10/6/23- Congratulations to Emma!
Congrats to Emma for receiving Fall 2023 SOAR Funds to support her research!
9/12/23- Congratulations to Angelyn and Shelby!
Congrats to Shelby and Angelyn for receiving Fall 2023 Provost Fellowships to support their research!
9/5/23- Welcome to our first immersion students of 2023!
Big welcome to Ding, Tyeshia and Mrityunjay, who are immersing in our group for the next month, as they consider their future research home for their Ph.D.
8/29/23- We held our first annual retreat!
8/26/23- Fall Beach Cleanup!
8/18/23- Professors Fieser and Thompson Host a Microseminar!
8/14/23- Welcome to the First Years and the Lab Turns 5!
Welcome to the department, first year grad students! We hope you enjoy orientation and your first semester as you work to find your new research home for your graduate studies. In other news, the lab turns 5 years old today! My goodness have we grown over the last several years, and I am proud of the awesome team we have become!
2022/2023 Academic Year
8/10/23- New Catalysis and Workup Hoods!
As our group and research grow, we have expanded to add two new hoods to our lab space. We have configured these two hoods to not clog up our Schlenk and High Vac Line Hoods with reactions and work-ups that don't need the lines. Therefore one hood is a Catalysis hood with 4 new hot/stir plates and samplers for numerous reactions, while the other will be a workup hood!
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8/8/23- Congrats to Megan!
Megan travelled back to the Twin Cities in Minnesota to receive the 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award! Congrats to Megan and the Team! The symposium celebrated the awardees from 2023 (top left), as well as those from 2021 and 2022 (top right, along with 3M sponsors). Megan was excited to connect with two of her sponsors who are fellow Tolman Group members, Drs. Gereon Yee and Leon Lillie (Bottom left and right, respectively)
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8/8/23- USC Dornsife Promotes Fieser Lab Research in Video! |
8/4/23- Congrats to Angelyn!
Angelyn was able to present her research in Team POL and Team DePOL at the annual Beckman Symposium, this year at the University of California, Irvine! Stay tuned for her research in a couple publications soon!
8/2/23- Bye to Jessica!
8/2/23- Jessica Presents at the REU Poster Session!
7/24/23- Pyrolysis GCMS from Shimadzu is installed!
7/19/23- Congrats to Megan!
7/17/23- Congrats to Dr. Yvonne Manjarrez!
Huge congratulations to Yvonne, our SECOND Ph.D. of the group! Yvonne gave an awesome presentation on her efforts to develop catalysts for alternating copolymerization of cyclic ethers and cyclic anhydrides. She finished the day receiving her lab rock (Group Tradition) and her front cover framed (with a copy being added to the group office wall above her desk). While Yvonne's witty humor and leadership will be greatly missed, we are excited to see her start her career at Sherwin Williams!
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7/11/23- Megan Presented at the Inaugural Plastic Upcycling and Recycling Gordon Research Conference
7/5-11/23- Inaugural Plastic Circularity Workshop
We hosted our first inaugural Plastic Circularity Workshop this week! We had six awesome participants for our first class, and we had a great time exploring the value and challenge of our use of plastics in our daily lives. See here for more info: Link
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6/25/23- Visiting the Farm Sanctuary
6/23/23- Congrats to Dr. Sophia Kosloski-Oh!
Huge congratulations to Dr. Sophia Kosloski-Oh for defending her thesis as the FIRST Ph.D. from Fieser Group! In true Sophia fashion, her presentation was sparkled with many CATalysts, drawn by the awesome Chris Kosloski-Oh. She left the day with her lab rock (Group tradition) and a framed photo of her back cover in Chemical Science. Sophia is the spark that really made our block copolymer project work, and we can't can't wait to see where the project takes us.
Sophia will be greatly missed, but we are excited to cheer her on as she transitions to a postdoc in Prof. Jeff Byers group at Boston College. |
6/22/23- New TA Instruments!
6/16/23- New Commentary Out Now in One Earth
Congrats to Sophia and Megan for their commentary article "From source to disposal: Cracking the code for Sustainable polymers" being published in a special issue in the Cell Press journal One Earth. Read for free until August 5, 2023 here
6/15/23- The Group Attended the 27th ACS Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference in California
Megan, Zach, Nancy, Eunice and Angelyn attended the 27th ACS Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference, held just down the road in Long Beach, California! Megan gave two talks (one on our PVC project and another on our block copolymer project) and co-organized (with Prof. Chris Kozak) a session on "Catalytic Approaches to Green Polymer Synthesis". Zach and Angelyn gave talks about their ROCOP projects, and Nancy gave a talk on her recent PET glycolysis paper. Our session went to dinner and won Trivia night as the "Vicious Cycle" team
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6/12/23- The Group Hosted a Pre-Conference Beach Cleanup!
6/8/23- Megan Attended CSC 2023 in Vancouver!
Megan visited Vancouver to give talks in a "Green Chemistry" session and an "Adventures in Molecular Catalysis" session in honor of Prof. Tom Baker!
6/5/23- Welcome to Gwenan!
A big welcome to Gwenan Walker, who is our USC Wrigley Institute Environmental Communications Intern
5/31/23- Welcome to Jessica!
A big welcome to Jessica Bowen from Christian Brothers University, who is joining Team Depol with Nancy as an REU student this summer!
5/31/23- Megan gave a talk in the 2023 iPRIME Annual Meeting
Megan went back to the University of Minnesota for the first time since she started at USC to give a talk in the Microstructured Polymers Program Workshop.
5/26/23- Congrats to Megan, Nancy and Mikiyas!
Our recent PVC paper was featured in the Materials Horizons Emerging Investigator Issue! Megan was interviewed and featured in the journal. Read here
5/15-29/23- Megan went on a lecture tour in the UK!
Megan got the opportunity of a lifetime to go on a lecture tour in the UK, giving 7 talks as 6 Universities! While it was a hectic trip, it was so great to meet new people, reconnect with old friends, and learn more about the incredible research in sustainability, polymers, catalysis and f-element chemistry in the UK!
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5/12/23- Congrats to Allison!
5/10/23- Congrats to Dana!
5/10/23- Congrats to Yvonne and Sophia!
5/4/23- Congrats to Harrison!
Congrats to Harrison for receiving SURF funds for summer research in the group!
5/2/23- New Paper Out in RSC Sustainability
We are excited to share our first paper using rare earth metal-containing ionic liquids for glycolysis recycling of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) plastics. This project was pursued by two undergraduate researchers, Caitlin and Casandrah, who worked so actively on this project with their grad student mentor, Nancy. Read here!
4/30/23- Spring Party and Hot Ones Challenge
4/23/23- Earth Week Beach Cleanup of Alamitos Beach
In honor of Earth Day, we held our spring beach cleanup in April this year. We partnered with the Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Annenberg Civic Engagement, and Assignment Earth to have our biggest cleanup yet! Our low estimate was 45,689 items, a new record for us. Our collective count is now 158,223 items that we have diverted away from the ocean! We are so grateful to all the volunteers for helping us in our mission.
4/19/23- Angelyn hosts Professor Karen Wooley
As a Beckman Scholar, Angelyn was able to host one speaker for a special student-hosted seminar. The graduate students in the group each picked a professor that they wanted to pitch to Angelyn to invite. Angelyn was excited to learn about Professor Karen Wooley and her group's research in sustainable, digestable, and biocompatible polymers. We had a wonderful day!
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4/11/23- New Paper Out Now in Materials Horizons!
Big congrats to Nancy and Mikiyas, as well as our collaborators Selin and Shaama, for our next PVC paper, out now in Materials Horizons! This was actually our first project in mind for PVC and we had our first indication of polyethylene selectivity almost two years ago. It took a while to develop all the methods to be confident in characterizing the polymer products, and now our PVC thrust is bursting with energy and ideas! Read here
4/10/23- Congrats to Shelby!
Congrats to Shelby for receiving a 2023 Summer Provost Fellowship to support her research in the group this summer!
4/5/23- Congrats to Allison and Aren!
4/5/23- Congrats to Kai!
3/25/23- New Paper Out Now in ChemCatChem!
Big congrats to Yvonne and Allison for their paper just accepted to ChemCatChem! Yvonne and Allison built off one of our earlier papers on simple salts for the perfectly alternating copolymerization of epoxides and cyclic anhydrides. They advanced our catalyst design by making rare earth metal ionic liquid catalysts that were able to achieve high molecular weight polymers faster than other catalysts in the literature. Read here
3/23/23- 49th Annual Stauffer Banquet
We were excited to return to the Town and Gown for the 2023 Stauffer Banquet that celebrates the achievements of students and postdocs at USC! Zach was awarded the Robert Bau Prize (In recognition of excellence in research and teaching in the tradition of Professor Robert Bau). Sophia was awarded the Research Impact Award (For students or postdocs who are first authors on a scholarly review article published in the last 3 years). Allison was awarded the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry, Outstanding Senior Organic Chemistry Student Award. Angelyn was acknowledged as a Beckman Scholar and Eunice was acknowledged for receiving a Gilead Fellowship! What a great night!
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3/22/23- Welcome to Harrison!
We want to welcome Harrison to the team! Harrison is a junior who will be working with Zach to synthesize target polymerization intermediates to improve catalyst design.
3/11/23- Fieser Group Co-organizes an Alamitos Beach Cleanup with the Wrigley Institute
In collaboration with the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies, the Fieser Group hosted an Alamitos Beach Cleanup for the 2023 USC Alumni Day of SCervice. While many of us lost count, our low estimate is approximately 35,000 items collected, which puts us past our 100,000 items total since we started these cleanups!
3/9/23- Fieser Group Attends Inorganic Reaction Mechanisms GRC!
Sophia, Zach and Megan attended the Inorganic Reaction Mechanisms Gordon Research Conference 2023 (Zach and Sophia are also attending the GRS). Zach presented a poster on our ROCOP project, Sophia presented on our Block Copolymer project, and Megan presented on PVC Upcycling. Megan was also selected for a Poster Presentation!
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3/2/23- Congrats to Nancy!
2/23/23- Welcome to Emma!
We are excited to welcome Emma Lu to the group, who is a freshman biochem major at USC! Emma will start working with Nancy to expand our PET depolymerization catalysis project.
2/9/23- Congrats to Megan, a 2023 Cottrell Scholar!
Big congratulations to Megan and the team for receiving a 2023 Cottrell Scholar Award from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement! Read here
1/25/23- Paper Out Now in Polymer Chemistry!
Big congratulations to grad student Zach Wood for his new publication out now in the Polymer Chemistry. This paper covers most of our favorite things: polymers, catalysis, mechanism, and rare earth metals. Zach was interested in how we can use the proposed polymerization mechanism of epoxide/anhydride copolymerization to better understand sequence control in polymerization when complex monomer mixtures are used. Read here
1/13/23- Congrats to Nancy!
Congrats to Nancy for being named a USC Wrigley Institute 2023 Wrigley Institute Graduate Fellow!
1/5/23- Congrats to Allison!
Congrats to Allison for receiving a Provost Fellowship for her research in the group this spring!
1/5/23- Paper Out Now in Journal of Materials Chemistry A!
Big congratulations to postdoc Dr. Mikiyas Assefa for his new publication out now in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A. This paper covers one of our first studies in processing poly(vinyl chloride) waste. Read here
12/21/22- Welcome Nick and Eunice!
We are excited to welcome our two newest group members, Nick and Eunice, who are both first year graduate students. Nick comes from Prof. Madalyn Radlauer's group at San Jose State University, and Eunice joins us from Prof. Alex John's group at Cal Poly Pomona. Nick and Eunice will take different directions in the group, with Nick joining Team POL to make block copolymers and Eunice joining Team DEPOL to work on PVC upcycling. We can't wait to see what discoveries they will make!
12/15/22- Instruments are here!
Working with Profs Barry Thompson and Travis Williams, Megan received funding from NIST to establish a Polymer Circularity minor at USC. As such, they received funds for EIGHT new polymer characterization instruments for a new polymer lab course! Four arrived today and we are so excited for the opportunities these instruments will provide to undergraduate education
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12/14/22- Celebrating Mikiyas!
As the holidays approach and Mikiyas' last month in the group comes to an end, we want to appreciate all that he has done as our first postdoc. Mikiyas has been such a force in our young group. He helped everyone with their projects, kickstarted several project areas and came up with several incredible ideas! We will miss everything about him in the group, but wish him the very best as he transitions to Dow Chemical. The group had a "The Price is Right" day to give him some gifts, and I gave him our first traditional Fieser Lab send-off rock.
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12/3/22- Holiday Party!
We had our annual group meeting holiday party extravaganza! On Friday, we had our last 2022 group meeting. All members gave a flash talk of their most exciting finding of the year. We also presented our annual Chemmy Awards. While everyone one at least one award, Sophia walked away with the biggest stack of awards! On Saturday, we had our potluck holiday party where everyone brought a traditional family dish. We had way too much food and a lot of fun.
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10/22/22- Congrats to Shelby for receiving SOAR Funding for her research!
10/13/22- The Group Tackled Apple Picking for Fall Break!
9/22/22- Megan visited her alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis!
9/18/22- First Beach Cleanup of the 2022-2023 School year- Alamitos Beach!
We held our first cleanup of Alamitos Beach for our Fall 2022 Beach Cleanup. It was shocking how dirty this beach was, and we are grateful to Professor Anne McNeil from the University of Michigan for suggesting it to us. Our goal was to reach 50,000 items collected total, which required around 8,000 items to be collected. We blew that goal out of the water, collecting over 34,694 items in 2 hours! This brings us to a total of 77,534 items total since we started our cleanups. Congratulations to team "Polyher" for collecting the most items (8,482) and receiving prizes of sustainable household products.
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9/10/22- Congrats to Allison and Aren!
Congrats to Allison and Aren, who have received Provost Fellowships for their research this fall!
9/9/22- Dornsife Highlights the Wrigley Environmental Communications Internship!
Read more about this internship that has led to tremendous scientific communication for our group!
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8/16/22- Paper Accepted in Chemical Science!
8/15/22- Welcome to the First Years and the Lab Turns 4!
Welcome to the department, first year grad students! We hope you enjoy orientation and your first semester as you work to find your new research home for your graduate studies.
In other news, the lab turns 4 years old today! What a wild ride, with a spectacular group of people.
In other news, the lab turns 4 years old today! What a wild ride, with a spectacular group of people.
2021/2022 Academic Year
8/12/22- Last Day of Summer!
I can't believe it is already here... Fall semester, 2022. We have a lot to be excited about as the summer comes to a close. We are so grateful to Alex for creating some really spectacular graphics for us, including graphics for our outreach website, TOC graphics for our upcoming papers, overviews of some research projects, one of our next beach cleanup tshirts, and an awesome video to promote our outreach website. We are also thrilled that Nick Roubineau was able to start his first immersion with us this summer! Finally, thank you to Savannah for kickstarting our microplastics research this summer! Savannah will be continuing this work throughout the next school year.
8/9/22- Covid Piñata and Group Milestone (NSF proposal recommended for funding)!
Today we celebrated a big milestone in the group. Our NSF Proposal to the MSN program has been recommended for funding!!! This grant supports Team Depol in their mission to controllably dechlorinate polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
Covid has been a huge barrier for a lot of new groups, so to celebrate, we beat up Covid (aka a pinata) for the group to reveal the news! We can't wait to share the news publicly in a few weeks! |
8/7/22- Sophia's Paper in Chemical Science is now live!
Check it out here: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2022/sc/d2sc02265f
8/5/22- Celebrating Casandrah's Last Day!
8/3/22- REU Poster Session!
Casandrah, Angelyn and Aren presented on their work at the REU poster session. While Angelyn and Aren will continue their projects into the semester, Casandrah had a more discrete timetable of 10 weeks. She did an amazing job finishing up the experimental work for a paper we are hoping to submit soon on developing catalysts for PET depolymerization.
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7/20/22- Sophia's Paper Accepted for Publication in Chemical Science!
6/18/22- RERC is back!
Megan went to the Rare Earth Research Conference 29 in Philadelphia. She presented on the group's block copolymerization project and also was an instructor in the inaugural Summer School before the conference, which aimed to introduce rare earth research chemistry research opportunities to undergraduate students. Also, have to catch a new baseball stadium when you get the chance! Thanks to Prof. Schelter and the Schelter group for organizing this conference three times!
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6/18/22- SCOM is back!
We were excited to have the Southern California Organometallics meeting back at UC Santa Barbara! Thanks to the Hayton group for hosting. Sophia gave a full talk on our block copolymerization project, Mikiyas gave a flash talk on our PVC project, and Zach, Yvonne, Dana, Nancy and Aren all gave posters.
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6/1/22- Welcome to Alex Palakian and Savannah Masters!
A big welcome to Wrigley Institute summer interns, Alex and Savannah! Alex is a Wrigley Institute Environmental Communications Intern, where he is helping us with graphics for our outreach website, paper TOCs, presentations, etc. Savannah is a Zinsmeyer summer student, working with Megan and Professors Audra Bardsley and Jill Sohm on a microplastics project.
6/1/22- Welcome to Casandrah Catterton!
A big welcome to Casandrah Catterton, who is joining us this summer from Reed College as part of the NSF REU "Snapshots of Chemistry: Visualization at the Molecular Level" program! Casandrah will be working with Nancy on Team Depol!
5/16/22- Welcome to Angelyn Nguyen!
As we transition into summer mode, we are excited to welcome Angelyn Nguyen to the group! Angelyn has just completed her sophomore year, and she was awarded a Beckman Scholarship from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, funding her research in the Fieser Lab over the next two summers and academic year! Angelyn will be working with Zach and Dana on Team Pol.
5/13/22- Congratulations to Our Graduates!
We had a wonderful time celebrating the five seniors, Collette, Adrian, Taleen, Caitlin and Aren, who walked for graduation today! As much as we will miss them in the lab, we are excited for their next steps.
See CBS News coverage of Collette's story: See Dornsife coverage of Caitlin's story:
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5/5/22- Award for Our Review Article!
Our review article about the catalytic methods for the recycling and upcycling of commercial polymers was awarded the 2021 Materials Horizons Outstanding Review! Link
5/4/22- Congrats to Megan!
5/3/22- Congrats to Collette!
Congrats to Collette for receiving a 2022 ACS Division of Organic Chemistry Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award for USC!
4/30/22- Group Party!
We had an awesome group party this weekend! The group participated in the "Hot Ones" Challenge and tried 10 hot sauces on wings that varied from 1,700 to 2,000,000 Scolville Heat Units (SHUs), and 15 people made it all the way to the end! The day was filled with good food, Mario Cart and pet rock painting (long story). Finally, the graduating undergrads received their traditional WWF lab socks from their mentors.
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4/29/22- 2nd Year Screening Symposium!
This year, the Inorganic Division decided the 2nd year students would present their screening research updates to the whole division in one day for a full symposium! Congrats to Nancy, Dana and Kai for presenting on their research progress! Also, Congrats to Nancy for being awarded the 1st Anton Burg 2nd Year Prize for Outstanding Research Presentation!
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4/18/22- First Research Paper Published in Inorganic Chemistry! Congrats Yvonne and Dana!
We are thrilled that our first research paper, led by graduate student, Yvonne Manjarrez, was accepted for publication in Inorganic Chemistry! We are so excited to start sharing our research with the community!
4/15/22- Grad School Decisions!
4/13/22- Congratulations to Aren!
Congrats to Aren for receiving the Provost Fellowship to work in the lab this summer!
4/13/22- Congratulations to Collette!
4/4/22- Congratulations to Collette!
Congrats to Collette for receiving an honorable mention for the NSF GRFP this year!
3/24/22-3/26/22- First Inaugural World Plastics Summit
Megan had the opportunity to attend and present at the World Plastic Summit in Monaco! What a great opportunity to meet many different people working different angles on plastic pollution problems. A big thank you to HSH Prince Albert II, Lady Oxana Girko and Mr Oleg Novachuk for funding and sponsorship.
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3/20/22-3/24/22- ACS National Meeting in San Diego
3/3/22-3/4/22- Stuaffer Lecture, Banquet and Symposium
We were thrilled to see Prof. Geoff Coates speak as this year's Stauffer Lecturer. Sophia, Yvonne, Zach, Nancy, Collette, Allison, Adrian, Aren, and Caitlin all presented posters in the poster session (with Collette winning a poster award!) Additionally, Megan gave a seminar during the Stauffer Symposium. This was the first time the department has come together since the pandemic started and it was an incredible event.
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3/3/22- Our Review Article is Popular!
Our review article on "Catalytic methods for the chemical recycling or upcycling of commercial polymers" was identified as one of the most popular articles published in Materials Horizons in 2021! We are excited the community finds it to be a good resource on this subject.
2/26/22- 40th Annual Avalon Harbor Underwater Cleanup
2/20/22- Beach Cleanup!
2/11/22- Congrats to Allison!
Congrats to Allison, who has accepted a 2022 Globalink Research Internship to work with Professor Fran Kerton at Memorial University! What an awesome adventure.
2/3/22- Congrats to Sophia!
Congrats to Sophia for being awarded a 2022 Wrigley Institute Summer Graduate Fellowship!
1/11/22- Welcome to Shelby Heiman!
A big welcome to Shelby Heiman, who will be joining our group this spring! Shelby is a sophomore chemistry major, and she will be working with Kai on the synthesis of degradable polymers with transition metal catalysts.
1/7/22- Congrats to Collette and Allison!
Congrats to Collette and Allison for being awarded Spring 2022 Provost Fellowships!
12/14/21- Congrats to Allison!
Congrats to Allison for being awarded a Spring 2022 Morrisroe Family Chemistry Undergraduate Research Fellowship!
12/2/21- Final Group Meeting Showcase for 2021!For our last group meeting of the year, everyone presented 2-3 slides on their favorite results from the semester. Everyone has such cool results, and we can wait to start sharing all of it in 2022!
We also had our 1st Annual Chemmies Results, which were our group awards (or Chemistry Grammys). Our senior members, Sophia and Yvonne, stole the night, taking home half of the awards combined! Pins from D Orbital Games served as the trophies. Finally, we had a cookie bake-off! 9 cookies were entered and everyone took them home for tasting. Results to be determined. |
11/19/21- Congrats to PV-C!Big congrats to Nancy Bush and Caitlin Dinh for winning the Wrigley Sustainability Prize Final Showcase for their proposed company for improved chemical recycling of polyvinyl chloride (PVC). They received $7,000 seed money for their efforts!
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11/12/21- Congrats to Nancy and Caitlin!Nancy and Caitlin have been named finalists in the Wrigley Sustainability Prize Final Showcase, which will be on Nov 19. They got to go to Catalina Island to participate in a workshop to polish their pitch (photo of the finalists to the right, credit to Wrigley Institute). Read more about their proposed company and the other finalists HERE
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10/26/21- Megan gave a talk at the Angular Momentum Online Seminar Series!
10/18/21- Welcome to Julius in the second immersion!
9/13/21- Welcome to Grace, Nina and Marcus!
A big welcome to our first immersion students of the year, Grace, Nina and Marcus will be with us for a month as they consider groups to join for their Ph.D.!
9/9/21- Congrats to Allison and Collette!
A big congratulations to Allison and Collette for receiving Provost Fellowships for their research this semester! Way to go!
8/18/21- Welcome to Aren Ohanyan and Caitlin Dinh!
A big welcome to USC seniors, Caitlin and Aren, who will be working in the lab with us this year. Caitlin will be working with Nancy and Aren will be working with Mikiyas on some depolymerization projects!
8/16/21- Welcome to the New First Years
We are excited to welcome the new class of graduate students this week! We hope you will have a wonderful graduate school experience here at USC!
2020/2021 Academic Year
8/13/21- Thank you to Julia and Rika
Today was the last day for Julia and Rika to work with us as part of the USC Wrigley Institute Environmental Communications Internship. It is impossible to describe the overall impact these talented ladies have had on the communication of our research and outreach activities. They helped us with our outreach website (which will go live soon), made videos about our group, designed tshirts and magnets for our beach cleanups, generated social media content for us to share and helped design Table of Contents (TOC) graphics. Thank you both for the extremely valuable contributions you have brought to our group. (Two magnet designs to the right)
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8/7/21- Beach Cleanup for USC Day of SCervice
We co-organized a beach cleanup of Hermosa Beach with the USC Wrigley Institute for the USC Alumni Day of SCervice! We picked up over 3,400 items and enjoyed a nice day on the beach
Special thank you to Wrigley Institute Environmental Communication Intern, Julia Lin, for designing the awesome t-shirts for this event. |
7/1/21- We submitted our first research article!
5/18/21- Welcome to Julia and Rika!
Welcome to Julia and Rika who will be working with our group this summer as part of the WIES Environmental Communications Program. They will be helping us with our scientific communication of our projects!
5/17/21- Congrats to Graduating Students!
A big congratulations to everyone graduating in this tough year (both bachelors and PhD). A very special congratulations to our graduating seniors, Galit and Bobby. We look forward to watching where your career takes you!
5/6/21- Sophia Presented to the USC Dornsife Alumni Advisory Council
Sophia had the opportunity to talk about her research (and the group's research) to the Alumni Advisory Council today! It is so exciting to be able to share our goals with the greater USC Dornsife community.
4/28/21- Congrats to Zach!
Congrats to Zach for completing his screening on the way to his qualifying exam!
4/21/21- Congrats to Zach!
Congrats to Zach for being selected as a USC Wrigley Institute 2021 Sonosky Sustainability Summer Fellow!
4/17/21- Congrats to our undergrad teammates!
As vaccinations continue to rise, and COVID-19 cases drop, we are excited to have positive things to look forward to. In particular, our undergraduate teammates have exciting roads ahead! Bobby will be heading to UPenn for his Ph.D. in chemistry, Galit will be heading to NYU for her masters in chemistry, Collette will be heading to UMN for the summer to work in Prof. Marc Hillmyer's group as part of the NSF Center for Sustainable Polymers REU Program, and Taleen will be an intern with the Clinical Operations Team at Gilead. Congratulations to all!
4/12/21- Welcome to Adrian Guerrero!
Adrian is finishing his junior year here at USC. He will be joining us this summer to get some research experience before his senior year, where he will work with grad student Zach Wood on polymerization catalysis!
4/1/21- Congrats to Sophia, No Joke!
Congrats to Sophia for passing her qualifying exam and becoming the group's second Ph.D. candidate!!! Well done!
3/23/21- Congrats to Zach!
Congrats to Zach for receiving Honorable Mention for the 2021 NSF GRFP!
3/18/21- Zach presented at our Inorganic Journal Club!
Zach gave an awesome talk about some polymerization catalysis in his Inorganic Journal Club talk
1/15/21- Congrats to Bobby!
Congratulations to Bobby for obtaining SOAR (Student Opportunities for Academic Research) funding for his research this semester!
1/15/21- A Big Welcome to the Group to Taleen Boghossian!
Taleen is a junior from San Jose, California, who will be working with Collette and Galit to build a new undergraduate project area to the group!
1/13/21- Fieser Group's First Ph.D. Candidate, Yvonne Manjarrez!
Congratulations to Yvonne, who passed her qualifying exam and is now a Ph.D. candidate!
1/5/21- 2021 Wrigley Faculty Innovation Award, Congrats Team!
To start the year off right, the Fieser Lab's proposal for the 2021 Wrigley Faculty Innovation Award has been funded! This seed money will help us kickstart our depolymerization catalysis projects. We are grateful for the support from the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies
11/28/20- A Big Welcome to the Group to Kai, Nancy and Dana!
We are excited to welcome our third cohort of graduate students: Kai Knight from here in the Los Angeles area, Nancy Bush from Connecticut and Dana Cheng from the Philippines!
11/7/20- Virtual Socially Distanced Neighborhood Cleanup Challenge!
We hosted our first Virtual Socially Distanced Neighborhood Cleanup Challenge in place of our beach cleanup (as we couldn't safely organize carpools in a pandemic). We had over 45 volunteers and collected 6,555 pieces of trash! See the Outreach Page for photos from the event!
11/1/20- Cocktail/Mocktail Party and Riddle Competition
10/12/20- Welcome to our 2nd group of immersion students for Fall 2020!
We are excited to welcome Marissa Strumolo, Mary Dana Czarinah Cheng-Tan and Kai Knight to the team for four weeks as they consider their future research home!
10/12/20- Drying Lanthanide Salts!
9/22/20- First Class Completes Screening!We are super excited to celebrate our first class of graduate students, Sophia Kosloski (bottom middle) and Yvonne Manjarrez (bottom right), who have now completed the screening step of their Ph.D.! Now they can breathe a sigh of relief before they start preparing for their qualifying exam this winter. Way to set the tone for the group!
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9/7/20- Welcome to our first group of immersion students of Fall 2020!
We are excited to welcome Nancy Bush and Kyle Crans to the team for 4 weeks to show them what we do in the lab!
8/24/20- Congrats to Collette for being awarded a Coupa Cares Scholarship!
8/17/20- Welcome to the new first year students!
We are excited to start the new fall semester, even with COVID-19 restrictions. We can't wait to show all the new grad students the cool research we are cooking up.
8/10/20- Welcome to our first postdoc, Mikiyas Assefa!
A big welcome to our new postdoc, Mikiyas! Mikiyas joins us after completing his Ph.D. with Trevor Hayton at UCSB. We are excited to see how his perspective will impact our research addressing polymer pollution
2019/2020 Academic Year
6/23/20- We are back in action!
The Fieser Lab has reopened for research, while following safety guidelines from USC and the Chemistry Department. We are excited to get back in the lab, while also continuing to do our part to prevent spread of the virus. Please wear a mask so we can stay open!
6/19/20- Congrats to Ashley for being awarded the Reba L., Harry W., and George H. Stahl Memorial Scholarship from USC Dornsife!
6/15/20- Collette is a recipient of the Garold Alfred Leach Memorial Scholarship from USC Dornsife!
This scholarship is awarded to students who demonstrate the ability or desire to further the interests of women. Congrats to Collette!
5/19/20- Our ACS PRF Doctoral New Investigator proposal was recommended for funding!
5/2/20- Collette is selected to participate in the WiSE Undergraduate Research Experience this year!
Congrats to Collette! Collette will be working on a few remote projects until she can return to campus.
4/7/20- Yvonne is selected to be a 2020 Wrigley Institute Sonosky Summer Fellow!
Congrats to Yvonne! Wrigley will support her research this summer in the design of rare earth metal catalysts for the synthesis of sustainable polymers.
4/3/20- 2020 Wrigley Sustainability Prize Winners - Plastic Evolution
Congrats to Yvonne and Collette for joining Yuhao Chen in Travis Williams' group who won first place at the Wrigley Sustainability Prize Finals Showcase! They won $7,000 for their proposed company, Plastic Evolution!
3/16/20- Lab Shut Down Until Further Notice
Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, our lab has closed until further notice. Our group is working from home to do our part to prevent spread of the virus. We can be contacted by email (on the Team page).
2/19/20- Congrats to Collette!
We are thrilled Collette will get the chance to work in the NSF Center for Sustainable Polymers at the University of Minnesota this summer!
2/12/20- Sophia Gave a General Audience Talk to the USC Board of Councilors!
2/7/20- First Open House of 2020
The group welcomed the first group of prospective graduate students to USC! We had a great time meeting students who will hopefully make up the next class of first year graduate students.
2/1/20- Third Beach Cleanup at Hermosa BeachThe group organized their third beach cleanup of Hermosa Beach. This time, we opened up the invitation to other departments at USC and were thrilled to get participation from several departments, including Earth Sciences and Biology. We were also excited to have Maurice Roper, the USC Wrigley photographer at this event. At this event, we collected over six thousand pieces of trash, with the majority being plastics.
Plus a new group photo! |
1/30/20- First Fieser Group Inorganic Journal Club Presentation
Sophia was the first member of the group to present her research progress at our Inorganic Journal Club. Well done Sophia!
1/20/20- The Fieser Group Volunteers with Project Scientist!
The Fieser group performed lab tours and science demos to promote STEM careers to young girls. See our Outreach page for photos.
1/16/20- Our High Temp GPC is installed!
1/6/20- Dornsife spotlights JP!
Dornsife has written an article about JP's unique path to graduate school and motivations towards environmental chemistry and scientific communication.
https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/3145/first-gen-chemistry-student-inspired-to-change-world/
https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/3145/first-gen-chemistry-student-inspired-to-change-world/
12/12/19- Lab grand opening party!
We finally welcomed all of our friends and family to celebrate the completion of our labs! The first grad students in the group got to pick the cake flavors: JP (carrot cake), Sophia (red velvet) and Yvonne (chocolate raspberry)! The group even got in the holiday spirit and made a snowman and chemistree!
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12/11/19- A big welcome to our newest team member, Shreya Chanda!
Shreya is a freshman from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She will be working with JP to synthesis nac nac ligands.
12/2/19- A big welcome to the newest graduate student on the Fieser team, Zach Wood!
Zach is a first year graduate student from St. Louis, MO (where he is also a St. Louis Cardinals fan).
11/13/19-Dornsife spotlights Megan and the Fieser Group research!
11/1/19- A big welcome to our newest team member, Allison Clark!
Allison is a freshman undergraduate student from Los Altos, California. She is excited to work with Collette and Ashley on a plastic degradation project.
10/25/19- A big welcome to our newest team member, Galit Ashkenazi!
Galit is a USC junior undergraduate student from Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, MX. She will be working with Sophia on rare-earth pincer complexes!
10/21/19- We are excited to welcome our second immersion students this year: Christopher (CJ) Koch and Clarissa Olivar Magallanes!
10/8/19- A big welcome to our newest team member, Ashley Federoff!
Ashley is a USC freshman undergraduate student from Fort Wayne, Indiana. She is excited to be working on a plastic degradation project!
9/9/19- We are excited to welcome our first two 2019 immersion students, David Velazquez and Zach Wood!
8/23/19- Move in day!
8/19/19- Big Warm welcome to the incoming first year class!
2018/2019 Academic Year
7/31/19- We will miss you Kelsy!
Today, Kelsy presented a poster of her summer work and we celebrated her last day with us.
5/29/19- Welcome to our summer REU student, Kelsy Boyes!
Kelsy is entering her senior year at Cedarville University and is getting some research experience in our group as she plans to go to grad school starting in Fall 2020.
5/20/19- Welcome to our newest group member, Alexei Nosov!
Alexei received a B.S. and M.S. in chemistry from Moldova State University. After leaving chemistry for a while, Alexei is taking chemistry classes at Santa Monica College to prepare for a Ph.D. program in chemistry!
5/19/19- Adopting Hermosa Beach!
5/13/19- Congrats to Collette for receiving USC SURF funding for her summer research!
4/12/19- Congrats to JP for being selected as a 2019 Sonosky summer fellow with the USC Wrigley Institute!
8/21/19: JP wrote a blog about his summer research: http://dornsife-blogs.usc.edu/wrigley/?p=1825
9/13/19: JP gave a presentation at the Wrigley/Sonosky/Bertics Fellows Symposium!
9/13/19: JP gave a presentation at the Wrigley/Sonosky/Bertics Fellows Symposium!
2/10/19- 2019 SC/OM
1/9/19- New Equipment!
Thanks to Agilent Technologies, we have now installed a new UV-vis, FTIR and GPC in the lab!
12/18/18- Welcome to Yvonne Manjarrez, Sophia Kosloski, and Juan Pablo de los Rios!
I am so excited to welcome our very first class of grad students. With this awesome team, I just can't wait to see where our research takes us!
10/18/18- Welcome to our second rotation students, Sophia, Emily and Joe!
10/3/18- Welcome Collette!
Welcome to the first Fieser group member, Collette Gordon! Collette is a freshman at USC who is excited to get in on the ground floor of our new lab.