Faculty Hires

Matthew Cook, Ph.D., joined the department in January of 2016 as an
assistant professor in organic chemistry. Cook’s research group is actively
developing new cascade reaction pathways to build molecular complexity
in a step and atom efficient manner. His group focuses efforts in areas to
develop transformations that can perform complex skeletal rearrangements
that define multiple stereogenic centers in a single operation. Cook received
his Ph.D. from the University of Bristol, UK.

Sharon Neufeldt, Ph.D., will join the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry
as a new organic faculty member in August of 2016. Key areas of research
in the Neufeldt group will include understanding and controlling selectivity in
metal-catalyzed reactions, utilizing methane in C–C bond-forming reactions,
and hydrogenating CO2 by exploiting novel ligand-metal systems. Neufeldt is
currently the Cram Teacher-Scholar at UCLA, where she works with Prof. Ken
Houk. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

Nicholas (Nick) Stadie, Ph.D., will be joining the department in January of
2017. Stadie is interested in the design and synthesis of novel porous carbon
materials based on ordered, nanostructured surfaces with the ultimate goal
of fine control of both topology and chemical composition. Stadie is currently
a research fellow at the ETH Zürich with Prof. Maksym Kovalenko as
well as a visiting scientist with Prof. Brent Fultz at Caltech. Stadie received his Ph.D from Caltech.

Professor Emeritus Paul Grieco retired from the department in the spring
of 2015 after a long and outstanding teaching and research career. He was
Department Head from 1999–2005 and received many awards for his
work including the Regents Professorship at MSU in 2006. He has made
profound contributions to synthetic organic chemistry and, via his students
and colleagues, to academic departments and industry nationally and
internationally. His contributions at MSU are equally profound and include
overseeing the construction of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Building as well as many charitable contributions to departmental scholarships, seminar funds and initiatives of the Montana University System