Group News

June 10–12, 2024:
Darshika Singh presented a poster entitled, "Utilizing Silicon Chemistry: A Key Approach for Achieving Regioselective Wittig Rearrangement" at the 53rd North American Silicon Symposium held in Columbus, OH.

May 1, 2024:
Anshu Yadav has accepted a summer internship at DuPont, in Midland, MI.

April 15, 2024:
Dr. Arzoo Chhabra established "The 4.0 Orgo Club" a tutoring business for college level chemistry classes.  Details on Arzoo's business can be found at her Instagram Page or by emailing her at: arzoothenerd@gmail.com.

March 17–21, 2024:
Anshu Yadav gave a presentation entitled, "Balancing reactivity, regioselectivity, and product stability in Ir-catalyzed ortho C-H borylations of anilines by modulating the diboron partner" at the spring American Chemical Society National Meeting held in New Orleans, LA.

March 1, 2024:
Chris Peruzzi successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, entitled "Hydrazone Ligands for Iridium Catalyzed C–H Borylations of Fluoroarenes: Strategies for Enhancing Rates and Selectivities."  Chris was co-advised by Professor Mitch Smith.

February 27, 2024:
Arzoo Chhabra successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis, entitled "Synthesis of hard-to-access borylated compounds and a computational investigation."

February 21–22, 2024:
Professor Rob Maleczka served as Chair & Co-Organizer of a Chemical Sciences Roundtable Workshop on “Open Access and FAIR Data in the Chemical Sciences,” held at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington DC.

December 29, 2023:
Professor Rob Maleczka was asked to Chair the American Chemical Society Committee on Publications.  In conjunction with that position he will aslo Chair and serve as an Ex Officio Member of the Chemical & Engineering News Editorial Board.

December 15, 2023:
Arzoo Chhabra has launched her YouTube Channel "The 4.0 Orgo Club".  Through this channel, she aims to inspire the next generation of scientists to recognize the value of learning organic chemistry. Check out her terrific videos!

December 11, 2023:
Thomas Oleskey successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, entitled "Iridium Catalyzed C–H 1,2-Diborylation and 1,2,3-Triborylation of Arenes Through the Use of Anti-Aromatic Pyrazine Based Ligands and Other Boron Related Studies."  Thomas has accepted a post-doc position with Professor Sing Lee in MSU's Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology.

December 15, 2023:
Professor Rob Maleczka was elected to Organic Reactions, Inc. Board of Directors.  He will begin his term as Treasurer-elect on January 1, 2024 and will begin his service as Treasurer on January 1, 2024.

December 5, 2023:
Pauline Mansour successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis, entitled "Ir-Catalyzed C–H Borylation of Arenes with N,B-Type Diboron Species and Ir(I) Anionic Complexes." Pauline was co-advised by Professor Mitch Smith.

November 21, 2023:
Arzoo Chhabra received a Great IDEA Fellowship from the MSU College of Natural Science.  The Great IDEA Fellowship Program to foster greater inclusivity and promote IDEA efforts in STEM. The program incentivizes graduate students and their mentors to spend some time away from their research to focus on inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility, or IDEA, initiatives and projects.  Arzoo aims to create a social platform for all graduate students and post docs of chemistry department so as to connect individuals, check in on their well-being, offer assistance with resource needs, and encourage the sharing of research tips from their daily work. Additionally, her platform will serve as a hub for sharing information about fellowships and important deadlines

July 28–30, 2023:
Professor Rob Maleczka served as a facilitator for the 2023 ACS Postdoc to Faculty Workshop held Chicago, IL.

August 29, 2023:
Arzoo Chhabra received a Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the MSU College of Natural Science.

August 15, 2023:
Anshu Yadav has been awarded Research Enhancement Funds from the MSU College of Natural Science.

August 9, 2023:
Pauline Mansour and Chris Peruzzu were each awarded Extraordinary Circumstances Fellowships from the MSU College of Natural Science.

July 9–13, 2023:
Arzoo Chhabra gave a presentation entitled, "Access to sp³ borylated and silylated cyclic molecules: Hydrogenation of corresponding arenes and heteroarenes" and Anshu Yadav gave a presentation entitled, "A hydrazone-boronate ligand for iridium-catalyzed C–H borylation: Selectivity for kinetic products of arenes and pyridines bearing CN and F substituents" both at the 47th National Organic Chemistry Symposium held in South Bend, IN. Anshu and Arzoo each received Division of Organic Chemitry awards to attenf the NOS.

June 13–15, 2023:
Arzoo Chhabra gave a presentation entitled, "Access to sp³ borylated and silylated cyclic molecules: Hydrogenation of corresponding arenes and heteroarenes" and Anshu Yadav gave a presentation entitled, "A simple and green preparation of tetraalkoxydiborons and diborondiolates from tetrahydroxydiboron" both at the 27th Annual Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference held in Long Beach, CA.

June 1–4, 2023:
Sean Walsh gave an oral presentation entitled, "Anti-Markovnikov hydrosilylation of capped DDSQ with electronically deficient styrenes" and Darshika Singh gave a poster presentation entitled, "The [1,2]-carbon to carbon to carbon silyl migration of α-hydroxy allyl silanes" both at the 52nd North American Silicon Symposium held in Midland, MI.

May 8, 2023:
Professor Rob Maleczka received the William J. Beal Outstanding Faculty Award at the 2023 MSU Awards Convocation.  The Beal award honors its recipients for a comprehensive and sustained record of scholarly excellence in research and/or creative activities, instruction and outreach.

April 18, 2023:
Jenna Leppek (undergraduate researcher) received the Thomas Alan Deline Endowed Scholarship and the Walter R. and Margaret W. Yates Memorial Scholarship from the MSU Department of Chemistry.  The Deline scholarship is awarded to undergraduate students majoring in Chemistry and selected on the basis of work performed as part of a research project conducted independently under the direction of a faculty member.  The Yates scholarship is awarded to undergraduate students majoring in Chemistry or Electrical Engineering.

April 12, 2023:
Emmanuel Maloba successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, entitled "Wittig Rearrangements of Silyl Allylic Cyclic Ethers and [1,2] Carbon to Carbon Silyl Migration of α-Hydroxyl Allyl Silanes."  Emmanuel has accepted a position at Corteva in Indianapolis.

November 18, 2022:
Professor Rob Maleczka was one of four faculty members to receive the MSU College of Natural Science Outstanding Faculty Award ant the NatSci Annual Meeting and Awards Ceremony.

October 21, 2022:
Professor Rob Maleczka serves as the Anslyn, Iverson, Sessler Lecturer, Department of Chemistry, University of Texas, Austin, TX;.

August 22, 2022:
Professor Rob Maleczka helped co-organize the Robert Grubbs Memorial Presidential Symposium at the American Chemical Society National Meeting held in Chicago, IL.

July 25, 2022:
Former Maleczka group undergraduate researcher, Dr. Jared Piper (B.S., chemistry, ’97) was named an ACS’ 2022 “Hero of Chemistry” for his role in the development of Paxlovid, the first oral antiviral pill for COVID-19. He led the team of chemists who scaled up the production of Paxlovid from milligrams of metric tons in 18 months. Thanks to this unprecedented drug development timeline, Paxlovid is now approved or authorized for conditional or emergency use in more than 70 countries, and more than 34.5 million treatment courses of Paxlovid have been shipped to date.

June 26–30, 2022:
Thomas Oleskey presented a poster entitled, "Ir-catalyzed C–H 1,2-diborylation and 1,2,3-triborylation of arenes through the use of pyrazine-based ligands" and Emmanuel Maloba presented a poster entitled, "Accessing α-sily-β-hydroxycycloalkanones and α-silylalkanals by [1,2]-carbon-to-carbon silyl migration" both at the 47th National Organic Chemistry Symposium held in La Jolla, CA.  Emmanuel and Thomas each received Division of Organic Chemitry awards to attenf the NOS.

April 5, 2022:
Sabrina Reich (undergraduate researcher) has been selected as the MSU recipient of the 2022 American Chemical Society Organic Chemistry Division Undergraduate Award in Organic Chemistry. This award recognizes one graduating senior for their outstanding achievements in organic chemistry.  This fall, Sabrina will join the Univerity of Michigan where she will purse a PhD in Chemisrty.

February 18, 2022:
Emmanuel Maloba (graduate member of the Maleczka group) was awarded a 2022 Pfizer Travel Award from the Committee on Minority Affairs of the ACS.  The award comes with a $2000 stipend to support Emmanuel’s travel to the spring ACS National meeting where he is scheduled to give an oral presentation entitled, “Studies on [1,2]-carbon to carbon silyl migration of α-hydroxy allyl silanes: A new access to α-silyl ketones and aldehydes”.  As part of the award he has also been invited to a reception honoring the 50th Anniversary of the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) being hosted by the he ACS Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Respect (DEIR).  Emmanuel has also been asked to present a poster on his research .

February 16, 2022:
Arzoo Chhabra (graduate member of the Maleczka group) is awarded a summer internship at Zoetis.

February 11, 2022:
Professor Rob Maleczka is appointed to the ACS Committee on Publications (2022–2024).

January 26, 2022:
Professor Rob Maleczka elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

November 16-17, 2021:
Professor Rob Maleczka is part of the planning committee for a workshop entitled "Laboratory Automationand Accelerated Synthesis: Empowering Tomorrow's Chemist -- A Workshop".  This workshop is hosted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Chemical Sciences Roundtable.

September 10, 2021:
MSU Chemistry, UC Berkeley, and Southern University were Beyond Benign's three Green Chemistry Education Challenges Awardees for 2021. Professor Rob Maleczka served as the PI on MSU’s grant, entitled “Transformation of MSU’s large enrollment undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory course:  Beta-testing of new green chemistry project-based labs” will help in the development of green chemistry labs for CEM 255.  Drs. Melanie Cooper, James (Ned) Jackson, Chrysoula Vasileiou and Mengqi (Veronica) Zhang at were other key participants as is Dr. Elizabeth Day (now at UTEP).

September 9, 2021:
Professor Rob Maleczka is part of the planning committee for a webinar entitled "Future Directions of Sustainability in Chemical Manufacturing".  This webinar is hosted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Chemical Sciences Roundtable.

August 22, 2021:
Badru-Deen Barry, Arzoo Chhabra, Emmanuel Maloba, and Thomas Oleskey (graduate members of the Maleczka Group) gave research presentations at the 2021 ACS Fall National Meeting. Emmanuel's poster was also selected for Sci-Mix.

July 30, 2021:
Badru-Deen Barry successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis.  Badru-Deen has accepted an instructor position at Kalamazoo College.

July 28, 2021:
Cliff Yang (REU student from Hillsdale College in the Maleczka group) presented a research poster entitled "One-pot cyanation of pyridines via iridium-catalyzed C-H borylations" at the 11th annual Mid-Michigan Symposium for Undergraduate Research Experiences (Mid-SURE 2021).

July 28, 2021:
Jose (Pepe) Montero successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis.  Pepe has accepted a post-doctoral research associate position at Merck, in West Point, PA.

May 31, 2021:
Professor Rob Maleczka's last day as Chemistry Department Chair!

May 17, 2021:
Nagham Almasraf receives a NatSci fellowship to join the group as a summer undergraduate researcher, where she will be studying an enzymatic approach to optically active silanols.

May 1, 2021:
Yilong (Deuca) Feng (undergraduate member of the Maleczka group) receives his BS degree.  Deuca will attend the University of Texas, Arlington for graduate school.

December 8, 2020:
Badru-Deen Barry and Jose Montero (graduate members of the Maleczka Group) receive Dissertation Completion and  Dissertation Continuation Fellowships respectively.

November 23, 2020:
Dr. Lamont Terrell (Ph.D. 2001) was named 2021 Chair-Elect of the American Chemical Society’s Division of Organic Chemistry. He will serve as Chair in 2022 and as Past-Chair in 2023.  After earning his Ph.D. at MSU, Dr. Terrell was a Pfizer post-doctoral fellow at Stanford, and then joined GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) as a drug discovery chemist. Dr. Terrell currently heads GSK's Research & Development Early Talent and University Diversity efforts.  He previously served the Division as an elected member-at-large from 2018-2020.  Dr. Terrell becomes the first African-American elected Chair during the Organic Chemistry Division’s 110 year history.

August 17, 2020:
Jose Montero (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) gave a research presentation at the 2020 ACS Fall Virtual National Meeting.

June 8, 2020:
Jose Montero (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) was selected for Dow's 2020 BEST program, which will be held virtually July 28–31, 2020.

May 5, 2020:
Austin King (undergraduate member of the Maleczka group) receives his BS degree.  Austin will attend MSU for graduate school.

April 28, 2020:
Jose Montero (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) was selected for an internship at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)

April 21, 2020:
Jose Montero (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) was selected for 2020 Graduate Research Symposium, which will be held at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM July 23–26, 2020.

February 5, 2020:
Austin King (undergraduate member of the Maleczka group), President of the MSU Chemistry Club, along with Michael Schwaintz, Joseph Hendrain, and Natasha Perry led the Club to victory in the Battle of the Chemistry Clubs Competition which was held on Saturday February 1, 2020.  Clubs from ten universities participated in the day’s events. The morning events consisted of Element Trivia, Obstacle Courses, and IUPAC Naming. MSU dominated in all categories by taking first place in the rankings after the morning events were over. MSU’s club continued to succeed in the afternoon at the Great Titration Race, and in timed events which tested their knowledge of density laws and visible light spectra. They then moved on to the Final Jeopardy round and won First Place in the competition!

December 16, 2019:
Badru-Deen Barry (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) receives the Rogowski Chemistry Graduate Fellowship.

December 8, 2019:
Dr. Nicole (Torres) Knight (PhD 2009) was elected to the Executive Committee of the ACS' Division of Organic Chemistry.  Nicole is a research scientist at Dow.  Her term will run from 2020–2022 and she will serve as a Member-at-Large.

November  23, 2019:
Professor Rob Maleczka served as an invited panel member on "Becoming a Faculty Entrepreneur" at the Michigan AGEP Alliance 2019 fall conference.

November  4, 2019:
Our recent JACS (Montero Bastida, M.; Oleskey, T. J.; Miller, S. L.; Smith, M. R., III; Maleczka, R. E., Jr. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2019, 141, 15483) article, along with the a JACS article from the Phipps' group at Cambridge (published back-to-back) on using steric shielding to attach boron to an aromatic rings’ remote para position is covered by Chemistry World.

August 15, 2019:
Badru-Deen Barry (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) receives the David and Sara Taft Graduate Fellowship.

July 15, 2019:
Jonathan Dannatt successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis.  Jonathan has accepted a faculty position at the University of Dallas.

June 23, 2019:
Jonathan Dannatt, Badru-Deen Barry (graduate members of the Maleczka Group) and Professor Rob Maleczka made poster presentations at the 46th National Organic Symposium held in Bloomington, IN.

June 14, 2019:
Badru-Deen Barry successfully defended his M.S. thesis.  Badru-Deen will continue in the Ph.D. program.

June 4, 2019:
Emmanuel Maloba, Jose Montero (graduate members of the Maleczka Group) and Professor Rob Maleczka made research presentations at the 50th ACS Central Regional Meeting (CERM) held in Midland, MI.

May 30, 2019:
Fangyi Shen successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis.  Fangyi has accepted an academic specialist position position at MSU.

May 3, 2019:
Lauren Kotsull (undergraduate member of the Maleczka group) receives her BS degree.  Lauren will attend Wayne State for graduate school.

May 3, 2019:
Austin King (undergraduate member of the Maleczka group) has been awarded a prestigious Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) by the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry, which is sponsored by Merck & Janssen. Austin’s project is titled Isolation of Asymmetrical Double-Decker Oligomeric Silsesquioxanes which is part of a collaboration with Professor Andre Lee (Chem. Eng. and Materials Science). He is studying new synthetic routes to asymmetrically corner capped double-decker silsesquioxane nanoparticles.

November 29, 2018:
Professor Rob Maleczka was named an Honored Professor of 'Overseas Expertise Introduction Center for Green Pharmaceuticals Discipline Innovation (111 Center)' Zhejiang University of Technology, China (2018–2021).

August 3, 2018:
Fangyi Shen and Jose Montero (graduate members of the Maleczka Group) presented their work at the 40th Anniversary Cisplatin Celebration and Symposium.

July 25, 2018:
Fangyi Shen (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) presented her work at the 2018 Biennial Conference on Chemical Education (BCCE) held at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, IN.

July 10, 2018:
Chathurika (Ruwi) Jayasundara successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis.  Ruwi has accepted a position at Proctor & Gamble

June 25, 2018:
Chathurika (Ruwi) Jayasundara (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) and Dmitrijs Sabasovs' (post-doc in the Smith group) paper on "Cobalt-Catalyzed C–H Borylation of Alkyl Arenes and Heteroarenes Including the First Selective Borylations of Secondary Benzylic C–H Bonds" was recognized as a "Most Read Article" of the month by Organometallics.

June 25, 2018:
Jose Montero (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) received a travel award to support his attendance at the fall National Meeting of the American Chemical Society held in Boston, MA.  Jose's poster and that of Jonathan Dannatt were also selected for Sci-Mix, which is held on the first evening of the meeting.

May 1, 2018:
Jonathan Dannatt (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) was selected to present his work at the upcoming Graduate Research Symposium (GRS), which is scheduled for July 26-29, 2018 on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington, IN.

January 25, 2018:
Damith Perera (graduate member of the Maleczka Group and post-doctoral associate at Pfizer, La Jolla) is the first author on a paper in Science that describes a platform for automated nanomole-scale reaction screening and micromole-scale synthesis in flow.

January 22, 2018:
Professor Rob Maleczka was invited to join the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine Chemical Sciences Roundtable.  Established in 1998, the Chemical Sciences Roundtable was created to be a neutral source of communication between all segments of the chemical sciences community, a major part of U.S. industry, employment and trade. Maleczka will join a prestigious group of leaders from the chemistry and chemical engineering fields as well as government representatives.

January 15, 2018:
During the National Conference of the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE), Kenyetta Smith (undergraduate member of the Maleczka group) was one of only four students to receive the 2017 American Chemical Society (ACS) Student Exchange Award.  Ms. Smith was recognized for a combination of achievements, including her NOBCChE abstract submission, peer-reviewed publication record, and campus/community involvement. This award includes travel and lodging costs to a future ACS Regional or National meeting, as well as a plaque that she received at the NOBCChE Awards Ceremony.

November 8, 2017:
Professor Rob Maleczka delivered the keynote address at Go Green to Go Gold, the ACS student affiliate symposium held at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI.

April 2, 2017:
Chathurika (Ruwi) Jayasundara (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) presented her work at the spring National Meeting of the American Chemical Society held in San Francisco, CA.

December 8, 2016:
Professor Rob Maleczka was elected to Treasurer of the American Chemical Society's Division of Organic Chemistry.  He will serve as treasurer elect in 2017 and then Treasure from 2018-2021.  Dr. Luis Sanchez (PhD 2010), an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Niagara University, was elected to the Executive Committee of the American Chemical Society's Division of Organic Chemistry.  His term will run from 2017-2019 and he will serve as a Member-at-Large.

November 9, 2016:
Kenyetta Smith (undergraduate member of the Maleczka group) presented her work at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students held in Tampa, FL.

August 14, 2016:
Damith Perera (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) received a Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the MSU College of Natural Science.

April 27, 2016:
Chathurika (Ruwi) Jayasundara (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) was selected to present her work at the upcoming Graduate Research Symposium, which is scheduled for July 28-31, 2016 on the campus of Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, PA.

April 14, 2016:
Fangyi Shen (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) was been selected as one of the 2016-2015 FAST (Future Academic Scholars in Teaching) Fellows by the Graduate School and the MSU Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning.

December 14, 2015:
Professor Rob Maleczka has been elected to the Executive Committee of the American Chemical Society's Division of Organic Chemistry.  His term will run from 2016-2018 and he will serve an alternative councilor for the Division.

November 7, 2015:
Professor Rob Maleczka delivered an invited lecture as part of the Frontiers in Chemistry Seminar Series sponsored jointly by Western Michigan University, Kalexsyn and Zoetis.

November 5, 2015:
Dr. Luis Sanchez (PhD 2010), an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Niagara University, has been appointed President-Elect of Gamma Sigma Epsilon, a Chemistry national honor society founded in 1919.  Dr. Sanchez will commence his term as president of the society in 2017, the same year Gamma Sigma Epsilon holds its 47th Biennial Conference at Niagara University.

October 15, 2015:
Jonathan Dannatt (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) was admitted to MSU's NIH funded BEST program.  The MSU BEST Program is focused on helping PhD students in the a biomedical science to develop the necessary skills to forge a professional path which suits his or her interest, skills, and professional goals.  

September 15, 2015:
Professors Mitch Smith and Rob Maleczka along with their collaborator Dr. Jossian Oppenheimer (Dow Chemical) have just received an NSF SusChem-GOALI grant to support their work on sustainable C–H borylations.

June 22, 2015:
Aaron Baker (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) has been selected as one of the 2015-2016 FAST (Future Academic Scholars in Teaching) Fellows by the Graduate School and the MSU Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning.

June 9, 2015:
Damith Perera (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) was selected to present his work at the upcoming Graduate Research Symposium, which is scheduled for July 23-26, 2015 on the campus of the St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas.  The ACS Division of Organic Chemistry's  Graduate Research Symposium provides an opportunity for 50-75 graduate students in organic chemistry to interact with leaders from academia, industry, various funding agencies, and publishers.  As the organizers report, competition to attend this year's symposium was extremely strong this year, which makes Damith's selection an impressive accomplishment.

June 2, 2015:
Graduate students Gayanthi Attanayake and Chathurika (Ruwi) Jayasundara were awarded MSU Graduate School travel funds to present posters at the 44th National Organic Chemistry Symposium (NOS).  This NOS will be held from Sunday, June 28 to Thursday, July 2, 2015 on the campus of the University of Maryland at College Park.

April 14, 2015:
Dr. Lamont Terrell (PhD 2001) has been selected as the MSU College of Natural Science's Council on Diversity and Community (CDC) seminar speaker for fall 2015.  Dr. Terrell will speak on his current work as a drug discovery chemist at GlaxoSmithKline as well as his pathway to that career.

April 6, 2015:
Aaron Baker (graduate member of the Maleczka group) has been selected as one of the 2015-2016 FAST (Future Academic Scholars in Teaching) Fellows by the Graduate School and the MSU Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning.  As part of this fellowship, Aaron plans to research the best methods for assessing the effectiveness of how we teach chemical safety at the undergraduate level.

March 31, 2015:
The MSU Chemistry Department held an alumni reception at the 249th American Chemical Society's National Meeting & Exposition held in Denver from March 22-26.  The theme of the conference was the chemistry of natural resources.  The reception was held at the Rock Bottom Restaurant and Brewery in Downtown Denver and was attended by alumni attending the ACS meeting and those who have relocated to the Denver area after graduating from MSU.

October 20, 2014:
Professor Rob Maleczka delivered an invited lecture as part of the Greater Indianapolis Organic Seminar Series sponsored jointly by Dow AgroSciences, Eli Lilly, and IUPUI.

July 28, 2014:
Professor Rob Maleczka has been named a 2014 ACS Fellow.  The ACS Fellow program honors ACS members for outstanding achievements in and contributions to science, the profession, and ACS.  Professor Maleczka joins the Department's previously named ACS Fellows, Melanie Cooper, Xuefei Huang, Paul Mantica and Kennie Merz.  Also among the 2014 fellows is Professor Emmanuel P. Giannelis.  Professor Giannelis is the Walter R. Read Professor of Engineering in the Materials Science and Engineering Department of Cornell University.  He earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from MSU in 1985, working with Professor Tom Pinnavaia.  Other MSU Chemistry alumni to have been previously named ACS Fellows include Bridgette A. Barry (Post-doc, 1985), David E. Bergbrieter (BS, 1970), Joseph A. Caruso (PhD, 1967), Larry R. Dalton (BS, 1965), Mary Ann B. Meador (PhD, 1983), Patrick B. Smith (PhD, 1978), Claudia Turro (PhD, 1992), and Bobby L. Wilson (PhD, 1976).

July 28, 2014:
Professor Rob Maleczka was named a Guest Professor of the Zhengzhou Tobacco Research Institute of CNTC for 2014–2018.

June 30, 2014:
Damith Perera (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) was awarded the Bronze GSK Award for developing and successfully executing an 18 step synthetic route to a GSK target.  GlaxoSmithKline established this award program to recognize valuable contribution to company projects.  Before Damith, only one intern had ever won one of these GSK awards and Damith was the only Intern so honored this year.

June 10, 2014:
Damith Perera (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) won the Best Poster Award at the GlaxoSmithKline 2014 Chemistry Day, June 6th, 2014.  His poster detailed recent synthetic work that he has done in the GSK Research Triangle Park Antiviral Chemistry Group.  Damith’s accomplishment is particularly impressive given that his poster was compared to 35 other posters, most of which were presented by permanent GSK employees with much more experience.

May 5, 2014:
Jason Unold (undergraduate member of the Maleczka Group) received the Department of Physiology's Undergraduate Research Award for his studies on catalytic borylations carried out in the Maleczka and Smith labs.

April 7, 2014:
Professor Rob Maleczka was named Illinois Wesleyan University's Hess Lecturer.

February 14, 2014:
Rosario Amado (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) was awarded an internship in the medicinal chemistry group at GlaxoSmithKline, Research Triangle Park, NC.  Rosario will work with Dr. Jun Tang in the HIV DPU group.  This group is is focused on the discovery and advancement of novel small molecule drug candidates for the treatment, prevention and cure of HIV/AIDS and related immunological dysfunction.

May 23, 2013:
Professors Mitch Smith and Rob Maleczka along with their collaborators Drs. Shane Krska and Peter Maligres recently received the 2013 Merck Technology Symposium's Technology Collaboration Award for their work on high throughput optimization of Ir-catalyzed C-H borylations.  Sean Preshlock and Behnaz Ghaffari were among the MSU students who participated in the award winning work.

May 9, 2013:
Rosario Amado (graduate member of the Maleczka Group) was selected to present her work at the upcoming Graduate Research Symposium, which is scheduled for July 25-28, 2013 on the campus of the University iof Deleware.  The ACS Division of Organic Chemistry's  Graduate Research Symposium provides an opportunity for 50-75 graduate students in organic chemistry to interact with leaders from academia, industry, various funding agencies, and publishers. 

March 11, 2013:
Professor Rob Maleczka has been selected as the recipient of the 2013 Meritorious Faculty Award by the College of Natural Science Alumni Association (CNSAA).  The CNS Meritorious Faculty Award is presented annually to a faculty member who has demonstrated excellence in the areas of teaching and research.

September 4, 2012:
Professor Rob Maleczka, the Department Chairperson, recently gave a talk on the Land Grant Act and the founding of Chemistry at MSU, entitled "No one was killed or seriously hurt in the process Chemistry during the early days of Michigan State University, the pioneer land-grant university" Presentation (pdf).

April 16, 2012:
Fangyi Shen (Maleczka lab) and Hongtu Zhang (Smith lab) presented posters at this year's University Undergraduate Research & Arts Forum.

March 12, 2012:
The College of Natural Science Alumni Association (CNSAA) Board of Directors has selected Dr. Bobby L. Wilson, Ph.D., as the recipient of the 2012 Outstanding Alumni Award.  Dr. Wilson was nominated by Dr. Robert Maleczka.

October 28, 2011:
Professor Robert Maleczka has been elected as a Member-at-Large to the Executive Committee of the American Chemical Society's Division of Organic Chemistry.  His term will run from 2012–2014.

October 28, 2011:
Damith Perera's poster entitled “Cross-Couplings that Avoid the Preparation of Haloaromatics: The Development of a One- Pot C–H Activation/Borylation/Suzuki Reaction with Immidazolylsulfonates as the Electrophilic Partner” earned second place honors in the poster competition held at Green Up the 3rd Michigan Green Chemistry Conference.  This conference took place in Ann Arbor on October 27.   Damith's poster was co-authored by Professors Mitch Smith and Rob Maleczka, as well as Jennifer Albaneze-Walker, Process Research and Development, Merck Inc., Rahway NJ.

June 9, 2010:
Professor Rob Maleczka's NSF grant entitled "GOALI: C-H Bond Activation and Functionalization Methods for Medicinal and Process Chemistry," was recommended for funding by the Division of Chemistry.  This grant is joint with Professor Mitch Smith and researchers at Merck.  It is also supported by the ACS Green Chemistry Institute's Pharmaceutical Roundtable.

June 10, 2008:
At the Boron in the America's XI Conference held June 4-8th in St. Louis, Professor Mitch Smith received the Distinguished Service in Boron Science Award, At the same conference Venkata A. Kallepalli won 1st place for the best oral presentation by a graduate student. Lastly, Michigan State University was announced as the host of Boron in the America's XII, which will occur in 2010.

June 10, 2008:
Professor Mitch Smith and Professor Robert Maleczka were awarded the EPA Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award, as was SiGNa Chemistry, a company cofounded by Jim Dye with ongoing participation by Ned Jackson's research group.

July 13, 2007:
Professor Rob Maleczka and Mitch Smith have received a $100,000 grant from the Pharmaceutical Roundtable of the Green Chemistry Institute, a division of the American Chemical Society. The grant will be used to further their work that can be used to promote green engineering practices in the pharmaceutical industry.

September 8, 2006:
Rob Maleczka and Mitch Smith received $1.38M, one of the 61 awards from the State of Michigan 2006 21st Century Jobs Fund. The title of their proposal was "Catalytic Boronate Ester Synthesis: Developing New Commercial Building Blocks for Drug Discovery."

February 27, 2006:
Shavon Ford (Senior Chemistry Major and undergraduate member of the Maleczka Group) was one of only 23 students from around the country to receive a Pfizer Summer Undergraduate Fellowship in Synthetic Organic.