Meet our Speakers
Ben W. H. Turnbull obtained an M.Chem (Hons) degree in Chemistry from Northumbria University (UK) in 2012. In 2016, he received a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Queen’s University (Canada) under the mentorship of Professor P. Andrew Evans where he worked on rhodium-catalyzed allylic alkylation reactions using nitrile-stabilized carbanions. Following a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Professor Michael J. Krische at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied ruthenium-catalyzed transfer hydrogenative coupling, he joined the process chemistry group at Merck in Rahway, NJ in 2018, where he is currently an Associate Principal Scientist working on a variety of both early and late-stage programs in the small molecule pipeline.
Professor Bill Morandi studied at ETH Zürich (2003–2008), receiving a BSc in Biology and a MSc in Chemical Biology. From 2008 to 2012, he pursued his PhD in organic synthesis at the same institution in the labs of Professor Erick M. Carreira. Afterwards, he moved to the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, CA) for a postdoctoral stay with Professor Robert H. Grubbs. From 2014 to 2018, he was an independent Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung (Mülheim, Germany), before subsequently returning to ETH Zürich as a Professor in 2018. He is currently Full Professor of Synthetic Organic Chemistry (Laboratorium für Organische Chemie) at ETH Zürich. He was the Head of the Institute of Organic Chemistry (Laboratorium für Organische Chemie) at ETH Zürich from 2022-2023.
Prof. Courtney C. Roberts (she/her) obtained her B.S. in chemistry from Pepperdine University in Los Angeles, CA. She then pursued her graduate studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, becoming the first graduate student in the laboratory of Prof. Simon Meek. During graduate school, Courtney developed rhodium olefin hydrofunctionalization catalysts using a new class of ligands called carbodicarbenes. After completing her Ph.D. in 2016, Courtney became a postdoctoral research fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Melanie Sanford at the University of Michigan where she explored C–H functionalization reactions using high valent Ni. Courtney began her career as an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota in the Fall of 2019. The Roberts group focuses on the development of d0 metal catalysts for alkyl–alkyl cross coupling as well as harnessing heterocyclic aryne intermediates for medicinally relevant building blocks and new methods in photoredox catalysis. While at UMN, she has been the recipient of the Amgen Young Investigator Award, the Sloan Research Fellowship, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the George Taylor Faculty Development Award (for teaching), the NSF CAREER Award, the NIH Maximizing Investigators Research Award, the 3M-Alumni Professorship, and the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship.
Previous Speakers
2023: M. Kevin Brown, David Nagib, Francis Gosselin, Jen Heemstra
2022: Tom Maimone, Stephen Fletcher, Danica Rankic, Cathleen Crudden, Philip Dawson.
2019: Regan J. Thomson, Scott J. Miller, Martin D. Eastgate, Jean-P. Lumb.
2017: Justin Du Bois, Chris Vanderwal, Abigail Doyle, Matt Francis, Louis-Charles Campeau.
2015: Albert Padwa, MG Finn, Laura Kiessling, Matt Sigman, Richmond Sarpong.
2013: Paul Wender, Suzanne Blum, Daniel Kahne, Neil Garg, Corey R. J. Stephenson.
2011: Ronald Breslow, Christina White, Sarah Reisman, Ivan Aprahamian.
2009: Helen Blackwell, Erick Carreira, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, Scott Snyder.
2007: Makoto Fujita, Amir Hoveyda, Barbara Imperiali, David MacMillan.
2005: Matthew Shair, Carolyn Bertozzi, Ben Feringa, John F. Hartwig.
2003: Richard R. Schrock, John L. Wood, Kevan Shokat.
Prof. F. Dean Toste was born in Terceira, Azores, Portugal but soon moved to Toronto Canada where he graduated with a B.Sc. (1993) and M.Sc. (1995) from the University of Toronto. He completed his PhD at Stanford University (2000) under the guidance Professor Barry Trost. After a post-doctoral appointment with Professor Robert Grubbs at the California Institute of Technology, he took a position as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley in 2002, where he is currently Gerald K. Branch Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Joel H. Hildebrand Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemistry. Toste’s honors include the Janssen, BASF and Mitsui Awards; the OMCOS Award and Thieme-IUPAC Prize from IUPAC; the Nobel Laureate Signature, Cope Scholar, E.J. Corey Awards from the American Chemical Society; the Merck Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry; the Mukaiyama Award from the Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry Japan and the Horst-Parcejus Prize from the German Chemical Society. He is an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada – Academy of Science, the United States National Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Science.
Ryan Shenvi is a Professor at Scripps Research in La Jolla, CA. He was born in Wilmington, Delaware and earned his BS with honors and distinction in chemistry as a Schreyer’s Scholar at Penn State University, where he conducted research with John Desjarlais and Raymond Funk. Ryan earned his Ph.D. in 2008 from The Scripps Research Institute as an NDSEG Fellow under the supervision of Phil S. Baran, and undertook postdoctoral studies as a Ruth L. Kirschstein NIH Postdoctoral Fellow with E. J. Corey at Harvard University. Ryan began his independent career at Scripps in 2010. His laboratory works at the interface of catalysis, complex molecule synthesis and functional optimization. He serves as Advisory Editor at Angewandte Chemie and as Executive Editor at the Encyclopedia of Reagents for Organic Synthesis.