Professor Abigail Doyle wins the ACS EJ Corey award for her outstanding original and insightful contributions to organic synthesis.
Since 2004, the American Chemical Society (ACS) has honored young investigators with the award, which is sponsored by the Pfizer Endowment Fund. Doyle will be honored at the Elias J. Corey Award for Outstanding Original Contribution in Organic Synthesis by a Young Investigator symposium at the ACS meeting in San Diego on Sunday, March 20, 2022 from 2:00 p.m. – 6:00 pm PT, at the San Diego Convention Center, Room 1A.
Professor Abigail Doyle received her A.B. and A.M. summa cum laude in Chemistry and Chemical Biology from Harvard University in 2002 and her Ph.D. from the same department in 2008. Professor Doyle began her independent academic career in the Department of Chemistry at Princeton University in 2008. In 2021, she moved to UCLA as the Saul Winstein Chair in Organic Chemistry.
The Doyle lab conducts research at the interface of organic, organometallic, physical organic, and computational chemistry. Our goal is to address unsolved problems in organic synthesis through the development of catalysts, catalytic reactions, and synthetic methods. We apply mechanistic and computer-assisted techniques to the analysis of these reactions in order to uncover general principles that can guide the design of improved catalysts and the discovery of new reactions. Particular areas of interest include Ni-catalyzed cross coupling, nucleophilic fluorination and radiofluorination, photocatalysis, and machine learning for chemical synthesis.
Doyle is the second UCLA faculty member to win the prestigious award – Professor Neil Garg received the award in 2017. In addition to Garg, previous winners are Ryan A. Shenvi, Sarah E. Reisman, Vy Dong, Seth B. Herzon, Phil S. Baran, Jin-Quan Yu, Martin D. Burke, Jeffrey S. Johnson, Jeffrey W. Bode, Mohammad Movassaghi, Brian M. Stolz, F. Dean Toste, Michael J. Krische, Justin Du Bois, David W.C. MacMillan, Gregory C. Fu.
The award is named for Harvard professor emeritus and Nobel Laureate Elias James “E.J.” Corey, an American organic chemist regarded by many to be one of the greatest living chemists.
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penny@chem.ucla.edu.
