Third-year organic chemistry graduate students Flora Fan (Doyle lab), Zach Walters (Garg lab), and Qingyang Zhou (Houk lab) have been named the 2025 Senior Foote Fellows.
The Senior Foote Fellowships support our most outstanding third-year graduate students upon completion of their qualifying examination for their Ph.D. degree and the Junior Foote Fellowships support our most promising applicants to our graduate program. All Foote Fellows are chosen by the UCLA organic chemistry faculty. In addition to be honored, all Foote Fellows receive a stipend spread out between two academic years.
The Christopher S. Foote Fellowship in Organic Chemistry was established in 2005 by his former co-workers and UCLA colleagues to honor UCLA organic professor Dr. Christopher S. Foote on his 70th birthday. Foote (pictured at top) and his wife, Professor Judi Smith, donated the remaining funds needed 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 was the Dean of Undergraduate Education and the Founding Dean of the UCLA Herb Albert School of Music.
About the 2025 Senior Foote Fellows
Flora Fan grew up in Auckland, New Zealand, and graduated with a B.S. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley in 2021. There, she worked in Professor Judith Klinman’s group developing synthetic tools to study protein dynamics and energy transfer in enzyme catalysis. In 2022, she began her graduate studies at UCLA in the laboratory of Professor Abigail Doyle. Her studies primarily focus on leveraging reactive phosphine intermediates in photocatalytic systems to develop novel synthetic methods.
Zach Walters grew up in Battle Ground, Washington, and obtained his B.S. in chemistry with a biochemistry emphasis from Boise State University. At Boise State, he worked with Professor Don Warner on the synthesis and biological evaluation of aziridinomitosenes. Zach began pursuing his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at UCLA in the summer of 2022, and is currently a member of the laboratory of Professor Neil Garg. In the Garg lab, Zach has worked on a variety of projects spanning both experimental and computational chemistry. These projects include methodology development leveraging highly strained and geometrically distorted compounds, as well as the total synthesis of complex molecules. Outside of lab work, Zach enjoys rock climbing, surfing, and other outdoor activities!
Qingyang Zhou was born and raised in Hefei, China. He received his B.S. in chemistry from Nankai University in 2022. He began pursuing his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at UCLA in the fall of 2022. He is now a third-year Ph.D. student in the laboratory of Professor Kendall N. Houk. He is working on applying computational chemistry techniques to understand the mechanism of organic chemistry and enzymatic reactions. Specifically, his current project focuses on the computational guided ligand design for GPCR proteins and mechanism of enzyme catalyzed pericyclic reactions.
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penny@chem.ucla.edu.
