Class of 2005
Rebecca LaLonde
Rebecca is the only member of the group who has ever willingly jumped out of an airplane at 14,000 feet. When not performing death-defying stunts in lab, she likes to knit.
Nathan Shapiro
Nate is the cool dude in the group.
Cole Witham
"A stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder."
Class of 2006
Greg Hamilton
Greg grew up in Evanston, the north side of Chicago. Being stuck between the big city and the upper class suburbs must have given him strange musical tastes, as he now spends as much time as he can annoying labmates with white people rap. Although he went down south to Emory for undergrad and is now on the west coast, he assures us he's still "reppin Chi."
Pete LaPierre
Henry, also known as Pete, graduated from Harvard University in 2006. As an undergraduate researcher he worked under the tutelage of Prof. Jared Shaw at the Broad Institute (now of UC-Davis) and Prof. Masahiro Murakami (Kyoto University). In the fall of 2006, he joined the Toste and Arnold groups as a joint member. He is currently pursuing applications of vanadium imido catalysts in organic synthesis.
Asa Melhado
Asa likes labwork more than writing blurbs.
Steve Sethofer
It seemed to be a sort of monster of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful.
Class of 2007
Chris Boyd
Chris grew up dealing with bitter winters in Ithaca, New York, and continued to brave the cold at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. Now free of the chill in sunny California, he is a joint student with the Bergman group, studying cobalt-mediated reactions. When not in the lab, Chris enjoys science fiction and the pretentious use of dead languages.
Jane Wang
Jane grew up in Honolulu before she decided to brave the cold Californian winters to do her undergrad at Caltech. While she does enjoy standing in front of archaic rotovaps, she also likes reading cooking blogs and is always on the lookout for a good ale for her chili.
Rachel Zeldin
Rachel wears brightly colored clothing.
Class of 2008
Mika Shiramizu
Mika was born and raised in Fukuoka, Japan. She received her B.S. from the University of Tokyo (Japan), where she worked with Prof. Shu Kobayashi. Inspired by 1-year study abroad experience at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in her junior year, she flew back to the States for graduate study and joined the group in 2008. When not in the lab, she loves watching theatrical performances (musical, dance, etc.)
Aaron Lackner
Aaron grew up in Minnesota, and attended Carleton College, doing undergraduate research with Prof. Steven Drew, synthesizing and characterizing chiral Pt "double salt" chains. He then worked at Merck for two years with Dr. Hyun Ok in drug development. When not in lab, He enjoys posing awkwardly in front of empty hoods.
Yiming Wang
Yiming was born in a communist country, grew up and attended college in two of America's centers of liberalism, and has come to Berkeley to do gold chemistry in the Toste group.
Jeffrey Wu
This is also what Jeff looks like when he is snowboarding.
Class of 2009
Miles Johnson
...
Hunter Shunatona
Hunter grew up in Texas, moved to UNC-Chapel Hill for college, and then came out west for grad school. He can be described via his ideal Jeopardy categories: What to do in case of zombie outbreak; The Mars Volta; Futurama; Project Mayhem; Films by Coen Brothers, Danny Boyle, and Wes Anderson; Esoteric References and Quotes; Shark Week; and Science-ing 101.
Chen Zhao
Chen grew up in Tianjin China before moving to the middle of nowhere in upstate New York. He finished his last year of high school in Cupertino, California before moving down to La Jolla to attend UCSD. While there, he performed research with Professor Charles Perrin, working on isotope effects and the Bergman cyclization. Now he is a joint student with the Bergman group NOT working on the Bergman cyclization (go figure). Ouside of lab, the New York Giants are his religion and Arrogant Bastard is his favorite beer.
Post-Docs
Giovanni Wilson Amarante
Giovanni was born and raised in Campo Belo, Brazil. In 2005, he received his Master degree in Chemistry at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora. Soon, he moved to Campinas-SP and carried out his Ph.D. work in Organic Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Fernando Coelho. Now, he has joined the group of Prof. Dean Toste working on asymmetric Gold catalysis.
Jean-François Brazeau
Jean-François was born and raised in Canada and received his B.Sc. in chemistry from UQAM. Afterwards, he moved to Université de Montréal where he obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Yvan Guindon working on radical chemistry and total synthesis. Now, he is enjoying his time in the Toste group working on gold asymmetric catalysis.
Skip Brenzovich
Skip was born in raised in Mechanicsville, Virginia, and carried out his undergraduate studies at the College of William and Mary. He completed his doctoral work under the direction of K. C. Nicolaou at The Scripps Research Institute in the area of natural products chemistry.
Matthew Campbell
Matthew grew up in the rolling hills of western Pennsylvania, where he received his B.S. in chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh while working under Prof. Dennis Curran. He then moved to Chapel Hill and performed his Ph.D. work in the lab of Prof. Jeffrey Johnson, where he worked on a variety of projects involving electrophilic amination, 3-exo-dig cyclizations, and the total synthesis of polyanthellin A.
Ana Gonzalez
Ana, a boron chemist with a gold fever, was born and raised in Puerto Rico. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, under the supervision of Prof. John A. Soderquist were she worked developing new organoborane-mediated processes.
Jack Liu
Jack obtained his B. Sc. at University of Toronto, where he conducted undergraduate research under Profs. R. A. Batey and M. Lautens. He then moved to University of Illinois for his Ph. D. studies on silicon-based cross-coupling, under the direction of Prof. S. E. Denmark. Now at Berkeley, Jack is helping to establish the group's foothold in heterogenous catalysis. Expect big things from nanometer scale materials. That's how we roll.
Osamu Kanno
Osamu was born and grew up in Yokohama, Japan. He earned his Ph.D at Tohoku University in 2000 and has been working for Daiichisankyo. He accepted a great opportunity to study abroad in 2009, and so now He is enjoying exiting chemistry and wonderful California.
Yutaka Kitagawa
Yuta and his wife are visiting Cal for a year from Japan, wehre Yuta works at DaiichSankyo co., LTD. Yuta is especially happy to be studying organic chemistry in the Toste Group.
Wataru Kuriyama
Wataru is from Kyoto, Japan and obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Tokyo with Professor Takeshi Kitahara, working on natural product synthesis. He has been working on asymmetric catalysis at Takasago since 2001. In 2009, he received two golden gifts: the opportunity to join the Toste group and the birth of his son. When not working on gold chemistry in the laboratory, he is on duty caring for his golden boy. Quite golden days.
Neal Mankad
Neal was an undergraduate at MIT in Cambridge, MA, where he did research with Prof Joseph Sadighi. He then switched coasts and began a PhD at Caltech in Pasadena, CA before unexpectedly moving with his advisor, Prof Jonas Peters, back to MIT during completion of his thesis. In order to continue the oscillating pattern, Neal has now come back west for his postdoc. He is happily learning about organic chemistry in the Toste group while also making interesting Au coordination compounds to keep in touch with his inorganic chemistry roots.
Vivek Rauniyar
Vivek comes to us from the University of Alberta, where he worked for Dr. Dennis G. Hall. His Ph.D. research was focused on catalytic asymmetric addition reactions of allylic boronates and their application to natural product synthesis. When not chilling by the solvent stills or developing new chiral counterions, he enjoys drinking and sports, Go Oilers!
Sunghee Son
Sunghee earned her B.S. and M.S. at Seoul National University in South Korea under Prof. Eun Lee. She completed her Ph.D. with Prof. Greg Fu at MIT.
Hyun-Ji Song
Hyun-Ji grew up in Daejeon, South Korea. She received her B.S. and M.S. in Chemistry from KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), where she studied tin-free radical reactions under the guidance of prof. Sunggak Kim. She earned her Ph.D. under the direction of David A. Evans at Harvard University in the area of asymmetric catalysis.
Kun Wang
Kun, who comes to the Toste Group from Beijing, has worked on biomass-related projects for 5 years now. He is working with new catalysts now, and is enjoying the exploration of this field. And he loves the sunshine in California.
Visiting Scholars
Vincent Medran
Vincent was born in Annecy, France. in March 1986. He began studies in organic chemistry at the Grenoble Institute of Technology. Since 2006 has been working hard in a 3-year Chemical Engineering program provided by the Ecole Supérieure de Chimie Physique Electronique de Lyon. From 2008 to 2009, He did an internship at Boerhinger Ingelheim Pharma in Germany working on prostaglandin inhibitors. After working in the Toste group, he plans on pursuing his Ph.D. in Med. Chem. His interests include swimming, scuba-iving, hiking, House & Electro music, Japanese food and photography.
Matthijs van Oers
Matt comes to the Toste Group from the Netherlands and would like to inform us that "If it ain't Dutch, it ain't much".
Undergraduates
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