4th PhD defense in the Bren Lab this year!! 🎓 Congratulations to Dr. Kaye Kuphal on her successful defense today! We wish her all the very best in her future endeavors and everything that lies ahead. 🤠🍾🎉

Cheers to Ryan on an incredible defense! One of our amazing mentors and an OG photochemist of the lab! Wishing you all the best for everything that comes next!🥳🥂✨

So great and honored to see our Bren Lab girls, Karishma @karishma11.bsky.social and Alana meet their Academic Grandpa, Prof. Harry B Gray at GRC Metals in Biology, 2026 presenting their cool work on cytochrome c proteins!!🥂🎓

Happy to have our brand new Bren lab members here!!! 🎉 Welcome Rohith and Liz, excited to see some cool science our new grads will create!!🥂🥳

Now official: we’re looking for postdocs for 2026 and beyond. If you want to use your synbio skills and the growing Microbe-Mineral Atlas to build cutting-edge biomining technologies read more below: docs.google.com/document/d/1... And apply here: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30906

Happy to share our recent publication presenting methods for photocatalytic hydrogen and carbon dioxide reduction using biomolecular catalysts! Check it out by following this link! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Evaluation of biocatalysts for artificial photosynthesis

Catalyzing the light-driven reduction of carbon dioxide and/or protons is an important approach to storing light energy in the form of chemical fuels …

sciencedirect.com

Proud of Maria Fernanda Lizarazo for earning a DAAD Scholarship and spending the summer doing research in Germany 🇩🇪 Welcome back to Bren Lab! ✨

Congrats @kayekuphal.bsky.social on an exciting collaboration with the @matsonlab.bsky.social, exploring some really cool cluster chemistry with electrocatalysis! 👏🎉 Check out their latest work here! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Proton Reduction with a Cobalt-Doped Thiomolybdate Cluster: A Structural and Functional Model of Co-Doped MoS2

A heterometallic thiomolybdate cluster, Cp*3CoMo2S4 (Cp* = 1,2,3,4,5-pentamethylcyclopentadienide) has been synthesized and identified as a molecular electrocatalyst for proton reduction in dimethylformamide. Compared with its homometallic congener (Cp*3Mo3S4), cobalt incorporation improves activity by lowering the overpotential for proton reduction, consistent with the contrasting catalytic performance of MoS2 and its Co-doped derivative. Isolation of the reduced form of Cp*3CoMo2S4 and subsequent reactivity studies provide insight into the reaction pathway. These findings establish Cp*3CoMo2S4 as a molecular model for extended sulfide materials.

pubs.acs.org

Cheering on Hafsa Irfan for her summer internship at Biogen, North Carolina, where she contributed to drug development and analysis. Way to go Hafsa!! 👏👩‍🔬

Shout-out to @karishma11.bsky.social for being awarded the Samuel A. and Ellen F. Lattimore Department Fellowship this year!! Huge congrats!! ✨🙌

Kudos to Alana Huynh for receiving the Robert and Marian Flaherty DeRight Department Fellowship this year!! Well done!!🥂👏

Kara Brem gives the second plenary of the morning on bionanosystems for solar hydrogen production #ISF2025

Congratulations Ellen! @matsonlab.bsky.social

ACS Publications@pubs.acs.org · 12mo ago

Congratulations to Prof. Ellen Matson, winner of the 2025 Inorganic Chemistry Lectureship Award presented at #ACSFall2025. Prof. Matson is recognized for demonstrating creativity and impact in leading research. Check out other exciting ACS Publications events at ACS Fall 2025: buff.ly/xfgKzh5

My quote of the day Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph. Haile Selassie

The International Conference on Biological Inorganic Chemistry (ICBIC) is taking place in Long Beach, CA from July 28 - Aug 1! There is still time to register and submit an abstract! www.icbic21.org

ICBIC 2025, Long Beach California

Join the prestigious International Conference on Biological Inorganic Chemistry (ICBIC) in Long Beach, California in 2025. Discover the latest advancements in the field of biological inorganic chemist...

icbic21.org

My quote of the day A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work. Colin Powell

End of Quals season celebration in the Bren Lab! Alana and Karishma passed their 2nd year oral exam!!!🎉

@brenlab.bsky.social at CanBIC-9

We are very happy to welcome Prof. Tom Driver to the @urochester.bsky.social chemistry faculty starting July 1 2025! He will be bringing his expertise in synthetic methodology and drug development while enhancing our high-throughput experimentation capabilities. www.sas.rochester.edu/chm/people/f...

University of Rochester (@urochester.bsky.social)

Official Bluesky account for the University of Rochester A University of thinkers, makers, researchers, performers, healers—pushing boundaries to Make the World #EverBetter About Us: https://www.roch...

urochester.bsky.social

This #ChemSciHOT article from Ellen Matson looks at how the location of a dopant dictates the proton–coupled electron transfer mechanism in vanadium-substituted polyoxotungstates and it's also part of our 15th anniversary community collection! Read the full paper online now: doi.org/10.1039/D4SC...

"One concept that creates misunderstanding is 'scientific consensus.' It’s time to stop using this shorthand and make clear what it really means," argues @holdenthorp.bsky.social in a new #ScienceEditorial. scim.ag/4jH2WxK

Scientists – interested in ways to share your work to non-scientists and decision makers? Please join this webinar on Tues Mar 25 3PM ET from @asbmb.bsky.social, where I'll be joined by @amyjhawkins.bsky.social (U Utah) and Sean Gallagher (AAAS). Register at www.asbmb.org/meetings-eve...

Communicating science for advocacy

March 25, 2025 | 3 p.m. Eastern

asbmb.org

Why AI won’t replace scientists capable of making disruptive conceptual breakthroughs - they pose questions that challenge, rather than align with, the training data set thomwolf.io/blog/scienti...

Excited to have an op-ed in the @nytimes.com today about rising rates of autism diagnosis, how that fits my own experiences, and why it's a bad idea to relitigate the vaccine debate. #actuallyautistic @ericmgarcia.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/o...

Opinion | Sorry, R.F.K.: There Is No Autism Mystery

Greater awareness, not vaccines, has driven an increase in diagnoses.

nytimes.com

Take a look at another article by members of the #ChemSky community: 'Amphiphilic, phosphonic acid-capped cadmium selenide quantum dots sensitize a thiomolybdate catalyst for hydrogen production' @karabren.bsky.social, @brenlab.bsky.social, @matsonlab.bsky.social

Amphiphilic, phosphonic acid-capped cadmium selenide quantum dots sensitize a thiomolybdate catalyst for hydrogen production

Combining a molecular thiomolybdate cluster, [Mo3S13]2−, with cadmium selenide quantum dots capped with tetraethyleneglycol monomethyl ether phosphonate (TEGPA) ligands results in a highly active…

buff.ly

I'm pleased to share our latest paper with our wonderful collaborators in the Lombardi lab on a biocatalyst for selective CO2 reduction: pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...

democrats-science.house.gov/sciencefirings

Were you fired by President Trump? | House Committee on Science, Space and Technology

The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology

democrats-science.house.gov

www.wired.com/story/nation...

National Science Foundation Fires 168 Workers as Federal Purge Continues

Firings at the NSF included permanent employees who had already completed their one-year probationary period, as well as at-will workers.

wired.com

I am thrilled to share this paper from my group that is just out in ACS Electrochemistry. We study factors that impact the temperature sensitivity of redox potentials in iron complexes. You can read about it here (it is open access): pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Effect of Coordination Environment and Electronic Coupling on Redox Entropy in a Family of Dinuclear Complexes

The elucidation of factors that govern the temperature sensitivity of the electrochemical potential is essential to the development of electrochemical systems with target properties. Toward this end, we report a series of isostructural homo- and heterometallic M2 (M = FeII, FeIII, ZnII) complexes supported by a phenoxo-centered tetrapyridyl ligand and ancillary carboxylate ligands that enables independent change in (i) charge, (ii) coordination environment of the redox-active center(s), and (iii) electronic coupling strength between redox centers. Variable-temperature electrochemical analysis of the series reveals the temperature coefficient for Fe-based redox couples to be highly dependent on the coordination environment of the redox-active center(s), with Fe centers in a pseudo-octahedral [FeN3O3] coordination environment affording a 2-fold greater temperature coefficient for the FeIII/FeII redox couple than those in ancillary ferrocenyl groups. In contrast, identical temperature coefficients for the FeIII/FeII redox event in Fe2 and FeZn complexes establish electronic coupling strength to have a minimal impact on the temperature dependence of the Fe-based redox couple. Taken together, these results provide important insights for the design of molecular compounds with target redox properties, and they provide the first examination of how electronic coupling influences the temperature dependence of the redox potential and the associated redox entropy in molecular compounds.

pubs.acs.org

Write to your Congress-critters and Senators today (especially in red states) and urge them to contact the White House and let them know your thoughts. Mine are that the purge yesterday likely did considerable damage to the US biomedical research and public health capacity. con'ted 3/n