Dr. Joyann Donaldson (Ph.D. ‘19) and Dr. Jesus Moreno (Ph.D. ‘17), chemistry alumni, have been named recipients of American Chemical Society (ACS) early career investigator awards. Donaldson was selected to receive the 2026 ACS Division of Organic Chemistry Early Career Investigator Award, while Moreno was selected to receive the MEDI (Medicinal Chemistry) Early Career Investigator Award.
The purpose of the American Chemical Society (ACS) Early Career Investigator (ECI) Award program is to recognize scientists who are no more than 10 years from graduate school or postdoctoral appointment and are a current researcher in a non-academic setting who have demonstrated significant accomplishments and outstanding promise for future contributions to the field. Donaldson and Moreno will receive the awards and give scientific talks at the 2026 ACS Fall National Meeting.
Donaldson is being recognized for her accomplishments at Pfizer Inc., where she now works as a Senior Principal Scientist leading organic synthesis and drug discovery.
“While competing as a world-class athlete, Joyann published a dozen papers during her time at UCLA, was the inventor on a patent, received numerous honors and awards, and displayed an impeccable commitment to inspiring the next generation of scientists,” her Ph.D. advisor, Professor Neil Garg said. “It is no surprise to see her continuing on her track-record of success in the pharmaceutical industry.”
Moreno is being recognized for his role at Bristol Myers Squibb, where he works as a Principal Scientist specializing in targeted protein degradation.
“During his time here at UCLA, Jesus’s achievements were astonishing,” Professor Neil Garg said, who also mentored Moreno. “Amongst his many victories in the lab, he completed the total syntheses of several akuammiline alkaloids, which are molecules with remarkably complex structures that few would dare to pursue in the lab. I am delighted to see his receipt of the MEDI Early Career Investigator Award that recognizes the nation’s rising stars in medicinal chemistry.”
About Dr. Joyann Donaldson
Dr. Joyann Donaldson earned her B.S. in Chemistry from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, in 2014, and then went on to earn her Ph.D. in Chemistry at UCLA in 2019, working in Professor Neil Garg’s lab. At UCLA, she developed chemistry generating and utilizing strained cyclic allenes, with potential applications in drug discovery, materials chemistry, and natural product total synthesis.
During her Ph.D., she was named a Chemistry-Biology Interface Trainee (2015–2018), completed a summer internship at Pfizer (2017), was part of the UCLA Alumni Association Fellowship, and received highly prestigious awards such as the Bristol-Myers Squibb Graduate Fellowship in Synthetic Organic Chemistry (2018–2019), Dissertation Year Fellowship from UCLA, and the Pfizer-UCLA Dissertation Award for Outstanding Contributions to Organic Synthesis (2019).
Donaldson joined Pfizer as a Medicinal Chemist after graduating from UCLA, where she progressed to a Senior Principal Scientist, now supervising two reports as a Synthesis Leader. Her contributions played a pivotal role in discovering Pfizer’s first-in-class hematopoietic progenitor kinase 1 (HPK1) inhibitor that entered Phase I clinical trials for Oncology. Donaldson also led and co-authored four published manuscripts on different applications of C-H activation chemistry, collaborating with companies such as Bioduro and HitGen. More recently, she led another discovery phase immuno-oncology project and a novel molecular glue project targeting prostate cancer. Outside of the lab, Donaldson has given numerous presentations including at the National ACS meeting (2021) and at the international Heterocyclic Compounds Gordon Research Conference (2023), sharing her groups’ research with the scientific community.
“Joyann combines scientific rigor and leadership in a way that is rarely seen so early in a career,” said Dr. Sajiv Nair, Senior Director of Oncology Medicinal Chemistry at Pfizer. “From advancing innovative synthetic chemistry to enabling new therapies for patients with cancer, she has consistently distinguished herself as both an outstanding scientist and an exceptional colleague. Her scientific excellence, dedication to others, and ability to inspire those around her make her truly deserving of this recognition.”
About Dr. Jesus Moreno
Dr. Jesus Moreno started as a biochemistry major at UC San Diego, but switched to organic chemistry after falling in love with the subject. After earning his B.S. in Molecular Synthesis in 2012, where he conducted undergrad research in laboratories of Thomas Hermann and Ryan Shenvi, he completed a 4-month internship at Vertex Pharmaceuticals before joining UCLA’s Organic Chemistry Ph.D. program. There, he worked in Professor Neil Garg’s lab on the total synthesis of picrinine–a complex, cage-like alkaloid that many organic chemists had been intimidated by. With his fellow lab member, and now Florida State University Professor, Joel Smith, Moreno spent about a year and a half on the project before achieving the first total synthesis of picrinine. Several other total syntheses within the same family followed, as well as contributions to the lab’s nickel catalysis research program.
Beyond research, Moreno received the Hanson-Dow Award for Excellence in Teaching (2013) and was awarded the Ruth L. Kirschstein NIH NRSA Predoctoral Fellowship (2015-2017) and Christopher S. Foote Fellowship (2015-2017). In 2016, he participated in the highly-competitive 10th annual Building Engineering and Science Talent (BEST) Symposium hosted by The Dow Chemical Company, where he was introduced to the wide range of careers in industrial research.
After graduating from UCLA in 2017, Moreno joined Merck & Co. as a Medicinal Chemist, then moved to Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) in 2020, now serving as a Principal Scientist. At BMS, Moreno led efforts toward developing targeted protein degraders that bind to disease-related proteins and tag them for removal by the body’s natural disposal systems.
“Jesus has contributed medicinal chemistry efforts at BMS to design and optimize targeted protein degraders molecules that modulate disease-causing proteins and mark them for the body’s natural disposal machinery,” said Dr. Thomas Cummins, Associate Director and team lead in the Small Molecule Drug Discovery at BMS. “His work has helped advance, BLIMP-1 and WEE1 degraders into pre-clinical development, while his contributions to platform-level improvements have accelerated degrader discovery across multiple programs.”
In 2024, he was selected as one of C&EN’s Talented 12 out of nearly 450 nominations. Recently, he represented BMS at the ACS Division of Medicinal Chemistry Symposium (2026), where he spoke on CELMoD™ and ligand directed degraders.
Prior ACS Division of Organic Chemistry Early Career Investigator awardees from UCLA include Ph.D. alumni Evan Darzi, 2025 (Garg group), Gregg Barcan, 2023 (Kwon group), Kyle Quasdorf, 2023 (Garg group), and Ted Johnson, 2011 (Jung group).
Article by Isabella Luo, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, isaluo196@g.ucla.edu
