The chemistry department was just awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to purchase a new nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer! Thanks to Prof. Cannon as well as Profs. Despagnet-Ayoub, Hill, Navarro, and Udit for putting together a successful proposal. The features of this new instrument will advance our research and also allow us to include more hands-on NMR experience in the teaching lab.

This summer was a challenging one for our group because we weren’t able to conduct laboratory research. However, we were able to initiate some computational research projects and keep the group together during the pandemic.

Check out our work from the summer at Oxy’s URC Summer Research Conference webpage!

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.