Our recent manuscript in Organometallics is featured on the front cover! "Manganese Mania" depicts the dependence of buried volume on Mn-Mn dimerization and highlights the C-C coupling chemistry using our redox-active Mn dicarbene complexes. @pubs.acs.org #MyACSCover

I did a thing: chicagomaroon.com/52978/viewpo...

October 2025 grads Lirong Lin and David Tresp just made it "hood official"! Congrats to PhD rockstars 3 and 4 from my group!!

To cap off the school year I had the great pleasure of giving a talk at Cornell University, hosted by the inimitable Pete Wolczanski. Campus is stunning and interactions with students, postdocs, and faculty were unforgettable! There's literally a creek and waterfall behind the chemistry building 😍

It's official - I received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor. :) I couldn’t have gotten to this point in my career without the efforts of my outstanding group members (past and present) who dedicated a slice of their life to make it all happen. Onwards and upwards! 🧪

It’s not every day that one can claim their research becomes “textbook material”. Today is that day. Lirong’s PhD work has been immortalized in the newly minted 8th edition of Crabtree’s foundational textbook (inside AND front cover)!!!! Original paper here: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Thanks so much to @pubs.acs.org and ACS Organic & Inorganic Au for this recognition! I am very honored to be part of an outstanding cohort of Rising Stars. 🌟 Article here: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

ACS Publications@pubs.acs.org · 5mo ago

ACS Organic & Inorganic Au is proud to present 2025 Rising Stars in Organic and Inorganic Chemistry Special Issue, celebrating early career scientists from across the globe who are driving innovation in organic and inorganic chemistry. 👉 buff.ly/zOtbvGV

Deeply honored to have been selected as a 2026 Sloan Research Fellow! The tenacity and talent of my research group members, current and former, make this dream a reality. 😄 Thanks so much to my nominator and letter writers for your steadfast support! #SloanFellow

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation@sloanfoundation.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Congrats to the 126 early-career scholars awarded a 2026 Sloan Research Fellowship, whose creativity and innovation set them apart as the next generation of scientific leaders! Our #SloanFellows represent 7 fields and 44 institutions across the US and Canada. Full list: sloan.org/fellowships/...

Yesterday I had the honor to give an invited research seminar at Yale University - thanks to Nilay Hazari for hosting me! A huge highlight was spending time with THE Bob Crabtree after the seminar - a really kind, witty, yet towering figure in the organometallic chemistry community. 🧪☺️🥼

A warm welcome to the two newest PhD students in the Prokopchuk group, Zhenhong and Chiranjit! 👋🏻 Young Padawans ready to learn the ways of the Schlenk and do some cool organometallic chemistry. 🧪

New online! Catalytically competent nickel(I)–isocyanide compounds for cross-coupling reactions

Catalytically competent nickel(I)–isocyanide compounds for cross-coupling reactions

Nature Catalysis, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41929-025-01473-9Nickel-catalysed cross-coupling reactions generally use Ni(II) or Ni(0) precatalysts. Here the authors report thermally stable dinuclear Ni(I) complexes with commercial isocyanide ligands for the efficient catalysis in Kumada, Suzuki–Miyaura and Buchwald–Hartwig cross-coupling reactions.

dlvr.it

Congrats to Nini for passing her PhD candidacy exam! The lucky sweater pulled her through on some tricky C-H BDFE questions, and she’s now ready to devour some cake 🎂

We have developed a metal-free electrocatalyst for rapidly and selectively generating hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂), a multi-ton commodity chemical. It operates through a novel H-atom transfer pathway to reduce O2. Read now on ChemRxiv! doi.org/10.26434/che...

Great work by Sanju and Viani this week in sharing their results at Pacifichem! 🌺 While the weather this week was 💦, the science was 🔥

The Prokopchuk group is representin’ at Pacifichem !! 🌺☀️ Check out Sanju’s talk this afternoon in the main group symposium, and Viani will present a poster on her Mn redox mediator chemistry on Friday evening. (Yours truly has 2 talks on Friday 🙂)

Nucleophilic #Bismuth: diarylbismuth-anions grant access to bismuth-acyl compounds & visible-light-induced reversible insertion/extrusion of CO! Just out @natcomms.nature.com: link.springer.com/article/10.1.... Congrats to the team (including @felixgeist.bsky.social, @jordipoater.bsky.social)!

Diaryl Bismuthides and Acyl Bismuthanes Enable Visible-Light-Induced Reversible Carbon Monoxide Insertion and Extrusion - Nature Communications

Carbon monoxide (CO) is one of the simplest and most fundamental molecules that has fascinated chemists for decades. Early-on, chemists have recognized and exploited its favorable properties as a key ...

link.springer.com

Nov 12 - 8:30 pm in Saskatchewan 🇨🇦🍁

Had an awesome visit to the @upenn.edu chemistry department earlier this week. Thanks so much for hosting, Dan! (and for forgiving my lack of early TM chemistry in my talk 😆) 🧪🥼

How to catalytically cyclize alkyl species onto alkynes? Just add a pinch of bismuth! Read about our findings in controlled radical reactions catalyzed by well-defined manganese- bismuth heterobimetallic complexes, just published in ACS Catalysis @pubs.acs.org: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Bismuth Radical Catalysis: Thermally Induced Intramolecular C(sp3)–C(sp) Cyclization of Unactivated Alkyl Iodides and Alkynes

Bismuth radical chemistry has attracted increased interest in recent years. Here, we report a series of bismuth–manganese complexes that catalyze the intramolecular redox-neutral coupling of alkyl iod...

pubs.acs.org

It has been an honour and privilege to co-write this piece in honour of Bob! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac… (Want to know how many papers Bob has in his self-curated digital reference library that he started in 1989? The answer will surprise you! Read the article to find out 😉)

Thanks so much to Eric Piechota and @natsynth.nature.com for highlighting our work!

Nature Synthesis@natsynth.nature.com · 10mo ago

Research Highlight now online: Palladium makes agostic C–H bonds more acidic by Eric J. Piechota www.nature.com/articles/s44... ($) Highlighting the @jacs.acspublications.org article by Andreas Hansen, Demyan E. Prokopchuk & co-workers #Chemsky

#chemnobel #chemsky #ozchem

Isn’t it amazing that modern Macs/PCs are back compatible with “ancient” printers and scanners? My all-in-one inkjet printer/scanner/copier is almost 20 years old and still works beautifully. Totally bucks the “planned obsolescence” mantra in tech

Continuing the saga of "radioactive shrimp" from Indonesia, the FDA this week posted a summary of all recalls so far flagged for Cs-137 contamination. It includes not only frozen shrimp but cocktail shrimp and shrimp skewers. 1/2

2025 Recalls of Frozen Shrimp Products Associated with Cesium-137

2025 Recalls of Frozen Shrimp Products Associated with Cesium-137 Contamination from PT. Bahari Makmur Sejati due to Potential Safety Concerns

fda.gov

One of my students needs to make a Ni(II) starting material, and if you aren’t aware, Luigi Venanzi has this awesome paper from 1958: dx.doi.org/10.1039/JR95...

Thanks so much to @bribarbu.bsky.social and @cenmag.bsky.social for highlighting our recent work! 😊 @tkschramm.bsky.social @unibonn.bsky.social

C&EN (Chemical & Engineering News)@cenmag.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Chemists finally know why palladium beats nickel at C–H activation New study examines the precious metal’s ability to acidify bonds in alkanes. cen.acs.org/synthesis/c-... #chemsky 🧪

Why is Pd often "better" at C-H activation than Ni? Just published in JACS, we show that Pd acidifies C(sp3)-H bonds 100,000 times more than Ni. Our DFT collab with @tkschramm.bsky.social and Andreas Hansen @unibonn.bsky.social was crucial to explain acid-base rxns! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Seriously?

Super busy summer for PhD defenses - Lirong Lin (holding the blue bottle of bubbly!) recently defended her thesis titled "Using Diamondoid Pincer Ligands and C(sp3)-H Activation Models at Group 10 Transition Metals." All very the very best in the next stages of your career! #ProudPI 🙂

"PhD-level experts in your back pocket" is a completely nonsensical description of AI but a pretty good description of social media if you follow the right people