Blum Laboratory
PASSION FOR UNDERSTANDING
HOW CHEMICAL REACTIONS WORK
Research at the forefront of organic, organometallic, materials, catalysis, chemical imaging, microscopy, and mechanistic chemistry at the University of California, Irvine
Latest News:
2025
Mar 11: Pía López defends her PhD thesis. Way to go, Dr. López!
Feb 3: Welcome new PhD students Roee Dagan and Maxi Ledesma, who are discovering strategies for catalyst recycling and organic synthesis reaction sustainability using fluorescence microscopy!
Jan 17: Bri McWhorter hosted a scientific communication workshop at our group meeting, where we honed skills for sharing our data and experiments.
Jan 3: Congratulations to Martin Stang and Erin Hanada on publication of their JOCSynopsis, “Mechanisms of Activating Agents to Form Organozinc Reagents from Zinc Metal: Lessons for Reaction Design,” ACS Editor’s Choice!
2024
Dec 18: Congratulations to Dr. Martin Stang on publication of “Isolation and Characterization of Sulfonium-Ylide-Stabilized Palladium Carbenes,” now in Organometallics!
Dec 11: Martin Stang defends his PhD thesis. Go, Dr. Stang!
Nov 6: Congratulations to Pía López on publication of her Perspective, “Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Microscopy (FLIM) as a Tool to Understand Chemical Reactions and Catalysis” in ACS Catalysis!
Sept 14: Congratulations to Dr. Joe Kaplan on publication of gold redox aryl thiolation of alkynes, now in JOC!
Sep 3: Joe Kaplan defends his PhD thesis. Congratulations, Dr. Kaplan!
August 20: Group alum Erin Hanada receives a prestigious Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship. Congratulations on all your achievements, Dr. Hanada!
August 2: Congratulations to Pía López, recipient of a departmental Dissertation Fellowship! Go, Pia!
July 26: Hannah Peacock defends her PhD thesis. Congratulations, Dr. Peacock!
July 17: Congratulations to Hannah Peacock on publication of her studies, “Buildup and Consumption of Species in Emulsion Droplets during Aqueous Suzuki Coupling Correlate with Yield,” now in JOC!
July 17: Group alum Tony Garcia receives a prestigious UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship. Go, Dr. Garcia!
June 16: Joseph Kaplan, Hannah Peacock, and Prof. Blum participate together in UCI’s 2024 Graduate Hooding Ceremony with friends, family, and colleagues. Congratulations soon-to-be-Drs. Kaplan and Peacock!
May 16: Congratulations to Yiqing Zhang for publication of her studies surfactant-dependent partitioning of organic reagents, now in JOC! This article was selected as an ACS Editor’s Choice article.
May 9: Congratulations, Alexis Ravenscroft, Outstanding 1st-Year Teaching Assistant!
May 9: Congratulations, Pat McShea, Gebel Awardee for sustainable chemistry research!
May 8: Welcome new PhD student, Pegah Honarmand! She will investigate catalytic polymerization by FLIM.
April 17: Congratulations to Hannah Peacock for her imaging characterization of Suzuki coupling under aqueous–organic conditions, now in ChemRxiv!
April 8: We watch the solar eclipse and a SpaceX rocket launch in the same week, enjoying science together.
April 1: Joe Kaplan starts his Dissertation Fellowship. He will investigate and develop heterocyclization reactions. Congratulations, Joe!
Mar 29: Yiqing Zhang receives the ACS Green Chemistry Pharmaceutical Round Table Travel Award! The award comes with the prestigious opportunity to be one of only a few student presenters at the Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference. She will present her research on “Surfactant–Dependent Partitioning of Reagents in Sustainable Reaction Systems Characterized by Imaging.”Congratulations, Yiqing!
Mar 6: Congratulations to Yiqing Zhang for elucidating surfactant-dependent partitioning of organic reagents, now in Chemrxiv!
Jan 3: Hannah Peacock starts her Allergan Graduate Research Fellowship, thanks to the Allergan Foundation.
2023
Dec 18: Congratulations to Dr. Erin Hanada, Sylvia Lou, and Patrick McShea for differentiating microenvironments of oxidative addition intermediates on zinc, now in Chem. Eur. J.!
Oct 25: Congratulations to Martin Stang and R. J. Mycka for harnessing Lewis acid selectivity and reversible haloboration for boron-based cyclization reactions, now published in JOC!
Sep 20: Congratulations to Hannah Peacock and Pía López, recipients of the Allergan Graduate Research Fellowship!
Sep 19: Congratulations to Joe Kaplan, recipient of a departmental Dissertation Fellowship!
Sep 6: Congratulations to Dr. Erin Hanada and Patrick McShea for discovering an activation/solubilization pathway of TMSCl to make organozinc reagents, now in Angewandte!
Sep 1: Congratulations to Joe Kaplan for development of iodination–group transfer to generate substituted alkenes, now published in JOC!
Aug 19: Joe Kaplan presents a poster on his borylation and iodination methodology development at the Overman Symposium. Go, Joe!
Aug 17: David Calderon presents a talk at the UCI Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium. Go, David!
Aug 15: Joe Kaplan presents a talk on his development of iodonation–group transfer reactions, at the ACS Meeting in San Francisco. Way to go, Joe!
Aug 15: Prof. Blum gives the ACS Cope Scholar Award Address at the ACS Meeting in San Francisco. Congrats, Prof. Blum!
Aug 7: Erin Hanada defends her PhD thesis. Congratulations, Dr. Hanada!
July 24: The group enjoys an Activate to Captivate scientific-communication workshop by Bri McWhorter.
July 19: The group celebrates a year of great scientific discoveries with cake, go karts, minigolf, laser tag, and batting cages.
July 17: Alexis Ravenscroft is back—this time joining as a rotating summer student before the start of her PhD at UCI. Welcome to the group, Alexis!