Graduate students Emily (Maly) Cosco (Sletten lab), Michael Yamano (Garg lab), & Alex Bagdasarian (Nelson lab) have been named the 2018 Senior Foote Fellows.
The Christopher S. Foote Fellowship in Organic Chemistry recognizes organic students’ accomplishments in graduate studies and research as well as their performance on the qualifying examination for the Ph.D. degree. The recipients, who receive a stipend spread out between two academic years, are chosen by the UCLA organic faculty.
In 2005, on the occasion of UCLA organic professor Dr. Christopher S. Foote’s 70th birthday, his former coworkers and faculty at UCLA created the fellowship in his honor. Foote (pictured above) and his wife, Professor Judi Smith, donated the funds to fully fund the endowment. Sadly, Foote passed away soon after the fellowship was established. His 43-year academic career at UCLA established Foote as one of the world leaders in the field of physical organic chemistry.
UCLA is fortunate to benefit from the continuing outstanding service and support of Smith, who is the founding dean of the UCLA Herb Albert School of Music. The Foote-Smith gift allows our department to support our most promising applicants to our graduate program as well as our most outstanding graduate students upon completion of their qualifying examination.
The 2018 Senior Foote Fellows – Organic chemistry graduate students Michael Yamano, Alex Bagdasarian, and Emily (Maly) Cosco at the reception following the Foote Lecture.
Alex Bagdasarian
was born and raised in Cupertino, California. He left his hometown to attend the University of California, Davis where he obtained his B.S. in pharmaceutical chemistry. During his studies, he conducted research under Professor Mark J. Kurth studying the effect of heterocyclic scaffolds as correctors for Cystic Fibrosis (CF) as well as developing synthetic methods for varying classes of heterocyclic compounds. Currently, Alex is a third year graduate student in Professor Hosea Nelson’s laboratory at UCLA. His current graduate studies concern catalytic C¬–H functionalization reactions of carbenium ions.
Emily (Maly) Cosco
received her B.S. in chemistry from Denison University in 2015 where she worked in the laboratory of Professor Jordan Fantini, synthesizing calix[4]arene host molecules for supramolecular structures. During her undergraduate education, she also performed research with Dr. Eric Wall at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in chemistry at UCLA with Professor Ellen Sletten and is a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Her research focuses on the development of small molecule organic fluorophores for optical imaging and diagnostics in the shortwave infrared.
Michael Yamano
received his B.S. in chemistry from the University of California, Irvine where he performed undergraduate research under Professors Vy Dong and Kenneth Janda. He is currently a graduate student in Professor Neil Garg’s laboratory at UCLA. His graduate studies are currently focused towards utilizing highly reactive strained intermediates for the synthesis of heterocycles.
