Author: Wade Downey

This summer, Danielle Confair ’16 finished up her Ph.D. work in the lab of Jon Ellman at Yale.  Not too shabby!  Our best wishes go out to Danielle as she moves on to industrial fame at Astra Zeneca in Waltham,

The University of Richmond returned to a real, if smaller, in-person graduation ceremony this year, just in time for the Downey group to lose four valued members.  We send our congratulations and best wishes to:  Claire Fuller, who will be

Fanfare and rejoicing!  Congratulations to our friend and past Downey group member Derek Obenschain, who now bears the title of doctor.  Derek completed his Ph.D. at the University of Washington under the guidance of an old friend of mine, Forrest

It’s been a challenging few months for sure as the world has battled the Covid-19 pandemic and the United States has struggled to come to grips with institutional racism.  We have a long way to go on both fronts, but

Kudos to Claire for winning this prestigious national award. Here’s the official press release, because Claire is now so important that she gets press releases.

Good news from here at the University of Richmond.  The excellent work of Grace Ann Robertson ’21, Matt Santa ’17, Kari Flicker ’18, and William Stith ’18 has produced a fine manuscript in Tetrahedron Letters!  Matt and Will began this

Well, it appears the aldol reaction just cannot get enough of the Downey group.  Through the work of several great students over many years, we may have polished off our work on the aldol reaction.  But maybe not!  You can

Four fine members of the Downey group graduated from UR this spring.  Congratulations to them! Kylie Britt – bound for NC State to pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry Kari Flicker – preparing those med school applications Elizabeth Heafner – off

Wade was interviewed by one of University Librarians last months for a podcast, which is now available for some scintillating listening.  The nominal purpose was a discussion of our two recent publications (Tetrahedron Letters 2018 w/Glist, Takashima, Bottum, Dixon and

Probably the most work-intensive TMSOTf project we’ve ever completed has just been published in the Journal of Organic Chemistry.  Major congratulations are in order for the three students who put together this very important study:  Danielle Confair ’16, Yiqi Liu