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KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
We are pleased to anounce the confirmed keynote speakers for BSOC 2011:
M. Christina White – Associate Professor of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
	M. Christina White was born in Athens, Greece where she lived until the age of five. She received her undergraduate degree in biochemistry at Smith College, where she worked with Professor Stuart Rosenfeld. After a brief stint in the biology graduate program at Johns Hopkins University working with Professor Christian Anfinsen, she began her doctoral studies in chemistry under the direction of Professor Gary Posner. In 1999, she joined Professor Eric Jacobsen's labs at Harvard University as an NIH postdoctoral fellow. During this time, she developed the first synthetically useful methane monooxygenase (MMO) mimic system for catalytic epoxidations with hydrogen peroxide. Christina began her independent career as a member of the chemistry faculty at Harvard University in July of 2002. She joined the department of chemistry at the University of Illinois in the summer of 2005, where she is currently an Associate Professor of Chemistry. Research in the White lab is aimed at the development of highly selective oxidation methods, similar to those found in Nature, for the direct installation of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon functionalities into allylic and aliphatic C—H bonds of complex molecules and their intermediates, and to use these methods to develop novel strategies for streamlining the process of complex molecule synthesis.
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Ronald Breslow – S.L. Mitchill Professor of Chemistry, Columbia University
	Ronald Breslow was born in Rahway, New Jersey on March 14, 1931. He received his undergraduate and graduate training at Harvard University, where he did his Ph.D. research with Professor R.B. Woodward. He then spent a year in Cambridge, England as a postdoctoral fellow with Lord Todd, and came to Columbia University in 1956 as Instructor in Chemistry. He is now the Samuel Latham Mitchill Professor of Chemistry at Columbia and one of twelve University Professors, and a former Chairman of the Department. Professor Breslow's research interests can be described generally as involving the design and synthesis of new molecules with interesting properties, and the study of these properties. Examples include the cyclopropenyl cation, the simplest aromatic system and the first aromatic compound prepared with other than six electrons in a ring. His work establishing the phenomenon of anti-aromaticity has involved the synthesis of novel molecules, as well as their study. Even in work on purely mechanistic questions, such as his discovery of the chemical mechanism used by thiamine (vitamin B-1) in biochemical reactions, the synthesis and study of novel molecules played an important role. His major emphasis in recent years has been on the synthesis and study of molecules that imitate enzymatic reactions. This work has included the development of remote functionalization reactions and the development of artificial enzymes.
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Ivan Aprahamian – Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Dartmouth
	Ivan Aprahamian received all his degrees (BSc-1998, MSs-2000, and PhD-2005) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. His doctoral research was conducted under the supervision of Professors Mordecai Rabinovitz and Tuvia Sheradsky, and focused on NMR spectroscopic studies of alkali metal reduced polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. He then carried out postdoctoral research in Professor J Fraser Stoddart's Group at UCLA (2005-2008), where he focused on the synthesis of switchable and highly-ordered interlocked molecules in the form of bistable [n]rotaxanes. He joined the Department of Chemistry of Dartmouth College as an Assistant Professor in August 2008. The Aprahamian group focuses on the development of novel hydrazone-based molecular machines and switches, and lithium-containing and -pillared carbon based materials.
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Sarah Reisman – Assistant Professor of Chemistry, California Institute of Technology
	Sarah Reisman was born and raised in Bar Harbor, Maine. She attended Connecticut College in New London, CT, where she developed a passion for organic synthesis working in the laboratory of Prof. Timo Ovaska, and graduated with honors in 2001. In the fall of that year, Sarah enrolled in graduate studies at Yale University and joined the research group of Prof. John Wood. She earned her Ph.D. in chemistry in 2006; her thesis detailed the total synthesis of the natural product welwitindolinone A isonitrile. For her postdoctoral work, Sarah pursued studies in the field of asymmetric catalysis as an NIH fellow, working with Prof. Eric Jacobsen at Harvard University. Research in the Reisman Laboratory focuses on natural product synthesis, with an emphasis on the development of catalytic asymmetric methods that facilitate the construction of complex molecules. This includes the synthesis of alkaloid natural products, catalytic asymmetric methods for the synthesis of arylated indolines, and the development of catalysts for enantioselective electrophilic chlorination.