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Sun-Joon
Min is now working as a Senior Scientist at the Chemoinformatics Center
of the Life Science Division in the Korea Institute of Sceince and
Technology (KIST) in Seoul, where his research is focused on medicinal
chemistry. And his wife got a job at Samsung Cheil Industries in Seoul
so they are together again!
Dongwon
Yoo continues to make great progress on two projects, the total
synthesis of tedanolide and the total synthesis of rhodexin A!
Tax
Georgiadis is now the Director of the Synthetic Core Facility at UIPUI
in Indianapolis. Congrats!
Check
out
the article in the September 22nd issue of C&E News for a spread on
Medivation 3100, the compound that Samedy and Dongwon made for the
treatment of hormone refractory prostate cancer. It's a report of the
boss' talk at the ACS meeting in Philadelphia. Great PR!
Jeremy
and Angie Clemens are now husband and wife, having recently tied the
knot. They are both doing well, still working for Wyeth
Research in Pearl River, NY. Congrats!
Two
new postdocs have now joined the group: Sung Wook
(Woogie) Yi, from Mark McLaughlin's group (and before that Kyung Jung)
at the University of South Florida and Forrest Arp from
Greg Fu's
group at MIT (and before that with Jon Sessler at Texas). Forrest is
working on the PEIPC
project while Woogie is working on the Sortase A inhibitor project.
Welcome to both of you!
The
boss hit the trifecta this year, with plenary lectures at the
national meetings
of the three
North American Chemical Societies. He spoke at the Canadian meeting in
Edmonton in May, the ACS meeting in Philly in August
(check out the C&E News report),
and then at the Mexican meeting in Tijuana in September. Now that's a
NAFTA year!
The
boss has expanded this European consulting by adding ZaCh System (a
merger of Zambon Chimia and PPG-Sipsy) and consulted in September at
their labs outside Verona, Italy. Now he has the chance to learn
a little Italian (and eat some great Italian food and drink some great
Italian wines)!
Peng
Cui has started his new position with Albany Molecular
Research (AMRI) in
Albany, NY, and reports that things are going well there. Good luck,
Peng!
Another
new addition to the boss' list of consultancies, namely CalciMedica,
Inc., in San Diego, which works (not surprisingly given their name) on
calcium ion channels.
UCLA
has funded the grant for the Bioscience Synthetic
Chemistry Core Facility for a third year. It involves research to help
biologists and MDs in various areas
of Med Chem, e.g., analogue design and synthesis, SAR, etc. Xiaolu Cai
is the researcher in the lab!
The
boss was a featured speaker at the Chemical Insights into
Biological Processes Symposium at the new Center for Cancer Research at
the NCI in August. He also spoke at the symposium to honor Victor
Marquez of the NCI at the ACS meeting in Philadelphia.
The
boss is giving a several-day course in Heterocyclic Chemistry
(similar to the Chem 241A class here he teaches every few years at here
UCLA) at Vertex, Inc., in San Diego.
Feliz
Perez is the latest in a list of Jung group members that have
been awarded a Chemistry-Biology
Interface Traineeship at UCLA, joining
Jennifer and Tim as Jung group trainees. Mikhail Guzaev was offered an
Associate Traineeship as well. And Ramin has finally relinquished his
Traineeship after 3 years. Way to go, guys!
Les
and Claudia Street have moved back to the US where Les is now a Senior
Research Chemist at Cortex Pharma in Irvine. Their daughter Katie
wants to be an organic chemist too!
Dongwon
and Youngsoon Yoo are proud to announce that their son Jayden Hyunjin
Yoo was born on April 22nd. Both mom and son are doing well.
Congratulations!
Jean-Marie
Contreras and Aude Weck are pleased to let us all know that their son
Hugo Contreras
was born on April
19th. As Jean-Marie told me in his
e-mail: "La maman et le bébé se portent bien" which I think means
they're both doing well. Chapeaux!
I
just found out something that happened more than a year ago. Mark
Lyster had a stroke and is recovering at a nursing home in Kalamazoo.
You can see his progress and send wishes at:
http://www.marklyster.com/. Mark, we all wish you all the best!
The
group was well represented at the ACS meeting in New Orleans with
Damian, Ramin, and Collin all presenting posters (and visiting the many
interesting haunts in the French Quarter!).
Franck
Slowinski reports that he and Candice have had a second son, Ewen, born
March 21, 2008. He joins his brother Gael who is 2 1/2 years old now.
How time flies!
Joe
Pontillo has joined Vertex Pharmaceuticals in San Diego as a Senior
Researcher and has now been reunited with John Saunders and his old
boss, who is a synthetic chemistry consultant at Vertex. Good luck, Joe!
Brian
Duclos has left Siemens and sunny California and started a new position
as a Senior Scientist at Pfizer in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Good luck!
A
new postdoc, Jin-Mo Ku, from the Research Institute of Pharmaceutical
Sciences of Seoul National University joined the group in February to
work on the mycolyl transferase inhibitor (TB) project.
Felix
Perez from Cal State Fresno and Mikhail Guzaev from UC Berkeley have
joined the group and are both settled in 3221 Mol Sci. Welcome!
Jamie
Im finished her PhD AND the total synthesis of laurenditerpenol. She is
now working as a postdoc for Neil Garg so she's still at UCLA!
David
and Tracie Ho announce the arrival of Jacob Junyin Ho on January 7,
2008 at 5:29 pm. Mom, son and dad are all doing well. Congratulations!
David is still working at Abraxis Biosciences in the Marina where he
consults regularly (along with Luke Koroniak) with his old boss, their
synthetic consultant.
Kim
Halweg Vogel was featured in an articla by the Women's Leadership
Network at 3M. The newsy article described not only her scientific
accomplishments but also her hobbies, one of which is her (and Dennis')
dog Daisy.
Tina
Choe has been promoted to full professor at Loyola Marymount and gave
her inaugural Professorial Lecture on Tuesday
11/20/07. Way to go Tina!
Xiaolu
Cai and his wife, Feifei Shao, had a beautiful baby
girl, Melody,
on November 11, 2007, three weeks ahead of schedule. Congratulations!
Willard Lew has
moved from Sunesis to Gilead where he is now a Senior Research
Scientist in their Med Chem group reporting to Manoj Desai. He gets the
distinct pleasure of reconnecting with his old boss who has been a
consultant at Gilead for more than 10 years! Good luck, Willard!
Rudi
Marquez and his wife Amber had a daughter, Iona Mairi, on October 1st.
All are doing fine. Rudi is the Ian Sword Lecturer of Bioorganic
Chemistry at WestCHEM at the University of Glasgow.
Bruce
Fahr is now working at Celgene in San Diego and gets the chance to
interact with his old
boss who is the main synthetic consultant at Celgene!
Wan-Joong
Kim has
taken a new position as a research chemist at the Electronics and
Telecommunications Research Institute in Daejeon, Korea.
Michael
Trzoss is working hard in his position as a Research Scientist with
Trius Pharmaceuticals in La Jolla
(where he gets to hear 'great ideas' from his old boss
who is their chief consultant and a member of their SAB). Lynnie is now
a grad student at UCSD. Good luck!
Aaron
Novack has moved across the bay, from ChemoCentryx in Mountain View to Metabolex in
Hayward. He joins Chris Rabbat and Spring Zhao, two former UCLA'ers.
Good Luck, Aaron.
Damian
Allen has risen to the post of Jung group leader replacing Hiufung!
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