Department of Chemistry

Faculty

Tepe

Organic and Medicinal Chemistry

Research in our lab is an interdisciplinary blend of synthetic organic chemistry, medicinal chemistry, and pharmacology.

Total Synthesis of Natural Products
Natural products represent a highly diverse and structurally complex natural library of compounds with remarkable biological and medicinal properties. Our lab develops new chemical methodologies to prepare natural products and natural product mimics with the goal of unraveling new mechanisms of protein regulation and their medicinal implications.

Personick

The Personick Group is advancing the state of the art in the synthesis of precise nanomaterials and is using these precision materials to define catalytic structure-function relationships at an elevated level of mechanistic detail. Through this combination of materials synthesis innovations and fundamental studies of catalytic reactivity, we aim to develop principles for the predictive design of catalyst materials that will enable key advances in technology for sustainable energy generation and chemical synthesis.

Zhu

The Zhu Group's research aims to develop new synthetic strategies for well-defined nanocrystals and 2-dimensional (2D) materials with atomically precise surfaces and interfaces that can lead to a fundamental understanding of how atomic structure affects catalyst performance and to use this new knowledge to design optimized catalysts for critical energy conversion and chemical transformation processes.Research will focus specifically on:
  • Electrochemical CO2 conversion
  • Sustainable nitrogen cycling

Chruma

Professor Chruma is teaching organic chemistry lecture and laboratory courses, with a particular focus on organic laboratory for non-majors/minors on a pre-health career track. Over the past two decades, he established a highly collaborative international research portfolio in organic synthesis. Independent research interests involved the development of new methods for the synthesis of biologically-active natural products, drug-like scaffolds, and luminescent small molecules, with a particular focus on using 2-azaallyl anions as imine umpolungs and super-electron-donors. Moreover, Prof.

Pires

The Pires lab uses synthetic chemistry as a platform to construct cell wall analogs that metabolically label live bacteria and mimic key aspects of cell wall architecture. Through this work, the interrogation of cell wall remodeling and processing in pathogenic bacteria will guide the design of next-generation antibiotics that circumvent resistance mechanisms. Moreover, we are working to establish the fundamental framework of a non-traditional antibiotic therapy based on the specific recruitment of components of the immune cells to target the destruction of pathogenic bacteria.

Harman

For decades, the dearomatization of arenes has been recognized as a chemical transformation of fundamental importance. It provides the connection between this robust and abundant source of hydrocarbons and the alicyclic frameworks common to many biologically active products. Thus, dearomatization methods have become powerful tools for organic synthesis.

Samonina

Dr. Jelena Samonina joined the faculty of the UVA Chemistry Department in 2019, where her teaching interests include Organic Chemistry and Chemistry for the Health Sciences. She earned her M.S. and her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at Warsaw University. After two postdoctoral trainings at the University of Virginia and at Stanford University she joined the faculty of Washington and Lee University.

Stains

Chemical Education Research: Enhancing Students’ Outcomes by Unpacking Postsecondary Instructors’ Practices

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - Faculty