End of Spring 2026

Last weekend, we celebrated our 2026 graduates with a very rainy ceremony. As such, let’s take a second to celebrate our graduates as well as the successes of the lab!

First, congratulations to Tyler, Christie, Charlie, Dexter, and Claire. I’m sure you’ll all go out and do incredible things!

Professor Elling and some wet graduates

Our group members also swept up awards at the Chemistry Department Awards Ceremony. Claire and Dexter shared the Pierce Prize for best undergraduate honors theses. Claire walked away with the ACS Connecticut Valley Section Award. And freshman Jonah Segal won the CRC Award for outstanding first-year student in organic chemistry.

Speaking of awards, Julian Frank was awarded best oral presentation at the recent ACS Connecticut Valley Undergraduate Research Symposium, besting several students from around the region. Julian will be headed off for a summer research experience at MIT in Steve Buchwald’s lab.

This has additionally been a very productive year so far for the group. Professor Elling authored two review articles. His review on ROMP with Prof. Billy Neary of UC Riverside was also featured on the cover of Chem. Rev.

Abdul, Dexter, and many other Elling Lab co-authors published this spring in J. Org. Chem. And Jessa, Claire, et al. have a manuscript under review as we speak!