The Cannon Lab is one of the recipients of a 2020 grant for research at principally undergraduate institutions from the journal Organic Syntheses! The grant provides a stipend and money for supplies for a student to conduct research over the summer in our lab. Many thanks to Organic Syntheses for selecting us for this award!

Our work on the total syntheses of the alkaloid natural products (–)-coniine, DAB-1, and nectrisine just appeared in ACS Omega! This was collaborative work with Prof. Deardorff to develop a robust synthesis of these biologically active natural products. The approach utilizes an enzyme-catalyzed hydrocyanation to establish the key stereochemistry, which is followed by transition metal-catalyzed reactions to transform this building block into the natural products. We envision this approach as a general platform for the enantioselective syntheses of alkaloid natural products. Congrats to the undergraduates that worked on this project together!

The Undergraduate Research Center is celebrating 20 years of supporting our students. Our own Prof. Cannon and Marc Kawada are featured in this video celebrating its success.

Senior members Marc, Kayla, and Yuri attended the symposium at UC Irvine last week to share their work and learn about research beyond the undergraduate level. Yuri was one of the five awardees for the Poster Prize for this event!

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Photos by UCI Chemistry

Another summer, another URC conference in the books! We had a fantastic ten weeks of summer, and we are definitely not ready to part with our beloved former members, Anne Marie and Daniel, who stayed for their final summer in the Cannon Lab. Anne Marie is off to Harvard and Daniel is off to UC Irvine, where they will both continue to do amazing work. We wish them the best of luck in graduate school!

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Kayla, Marc, and Yuri had a great time presenting their research this week at the 46th National Organic Symposium at Indiana University, and Yuri was awarded the Undergraduate Poster Prize for her session! Jeff was also featured on a panel about academic careers at PUIs and had the opportunity to speak about his experience leading a group of undergrads. See you in two years for even more exciting chemistry, NOS!

Daniel and Anne Marie presented at the ACS National Meeting in Orlando this week! It was great to share our work with chemists from around the world and learn about new advances in the field.

Congratulations to Marc Kawada ’20, one of this year’s Fletcher Jones Science Scholars at Occidental! With the support of this prestigious award, Marc will continue his research developing methods to make new carbon-carbon bonds using visible light-harvesting catalysts.

Hailey, Daniel, Marc, and Anne Marie attended the Southern California Conference for Undergraduate Research this weekend at Pasadena City College. We had a great time sharing our research with our peers!

Congratulations to Natalie, Tina, Molly, and Jeff! Their work on the diastereoselective synthesis of unnatural amino acids has been accepted to Journal of Organic Chemistry!