Vy Maria Dong (born 1976 in Big Spring, Texas) is a Vietnamese-American Chancellor's Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). Dong works on enantioselective catalysis and natural product synthesis.[1] She received the Royal Society of Chemistry's Merck, Sharp & Dohme Award in 2020,[2] the American Chemical Society's Elias James Corey Award in 2019,[3][4] and the UCI's Distinguished Alumni Award in 2018.[5][6]

Vy Dong
Born
Vy Maria Dong

1976 (age 47–48)
Alma materUniversity of California, Irvine B.S. (1998)
California Institute of Technology Ph.D. (2003)
Scientific career
FieldsOrganic chemistry
InstitutionsUniversity of California, Irvine (2012-present)
University of Toronto (2006-2012)
University of California, Berkeley (2004-2006)
ThesisNovel Variants of the Zwitterionic Claisen Rearrangement and the Total Synthesis of Erythronolide B (2003)
Doctoral advisorDavid MacMillan
Other academic advisorsLarry E. Overman, Robert G. Bergman, Ken Raymond
Websitewww.chem.uci.edu/~dongv

Early life and education edit

Dong was born in Big Spring, Texas, in 1976, where she spent her early childhood, and moved with her family to Anaheim, California.[1][7][8] The first in her family to attend college, she studied chemistry at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) as a Regents' Scholar.[8][9] Dong decided to study chemistry during her sophomore year after taking a class with Larry E. Overman, whom she later conducted undergraduate research with. She graduated magna cum laude in 1998 from UCI.

For her graduate studies, Dong attended the University of California, Berkeley, joining David MacMillan's lab as one of his first graduate students.[10] She moved with MacMillan to the California Institute of Technology, earning her PhD there in 2004. Her thesis featured work on variants of a zwitterionic-Claisen rearrangement,[11][12] and their application towards a total synthesis of the natural product erythronolide B.[13]

Dong then moved back to UC Berkeley, working on supramolecular chemistry with Robert G. Bergman and Ken Raymond as a NIH Postdoctoral Fellow.[14] Her work with Bergman and Raymond focused on the development of a supramolecular host molecule that can stabilize reactive iminium ions in water.[15]

Research and career edit

Dong began her independent career in 2006 at the University of Toronto. At Toronto, she worked on heterocycles for medicinal chemistry. She demonstrated how lactones could be synthesized from keto-aldehydes using rhodium catalysts, achieving regio- and enantioselective lactones without any waste products.[16] Dong was appointed the Adrain Brook Distinguished Professor at the University of Toronto in 2011.[17]

In 2013, Dong moved her research group to the University of California, Irvine (UCI).[18] Early highlights of research at UCI include catalytic hydroacylation and the activation of aldehyde C-H bonds.[19][20] Dong demonstrated that rhodium catalysis could be used to make cyclic peptides, using entirely achiral building blocks and hydrogenation catalysts.[21][22] Rh-hydride catalysis permits enantioselective reduction and allows access to motifs popular in medicinal chemistry.[23] Dong has also reported an aldehyde-alkyne coupling strategy using a dual rhodium catalyst and amine organocatalyst system.[24] Dong continues to explore new reagents, catalysts and strategies for organic synthesis.[7]

Awards and honors edit

Dong is the recipient of numerous awards for her research in organic chemistry. She was awarded an Ontario Research Fund grant in 2008. Dong delivered the inaugural Eli Lilly Young lecture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2009, where she discussed the catalytic transformations of C-H bonds.[25] She was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship in 2009 and a named an Amgen Young Investigator in 2010. In 2010 she was awarded the AstraZeneca Award in Chemistry.[26] She won an Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award of the American Chemical Society in 2010 for her contributions to organic chemistry.[25] In 2011, Dong won the Roche Excellence in Chemistry award.[27] Dong won a Novartis Chemistry Lecturer in 2012. She was awarded a Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry in Japan (SSOJC) Lectureship,[28] and a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship in 2013.[1] In 2016, Dong was awarded the Iota Sigma Pi Agnes Fay Morgan Research Award for her exceptional research on catalytic hydroacylation.[10][29] Dong received the UCI's Distinguished Alumni Award in 2018,[5][6] the American Chemical Society's Elias James Corey Award in 2019,[3][4] and the Royal Society of Chemistry's Merck, Sharp & Dohme Award in 2020.[2]

Dong has served as an associate editor of the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Chemical Science since 2015.[30]

Personal life edit

Dong met her future husband, Wilmer Alkhas, at the University of California, Irvine.[9] They have a son, Liam.

External links edit

  • Vy M. Dong's Publications indexed by Google Scholar (has not been updated since 2014)
  • A Few of my Favorite Rings: Catalysis Inspired by Cyclic Structures, talk at a Physical Science Breakfast Lecture, 2013 (Video)
  • CHON: An Organic Love Story, talk at TEDxIrvine in 2015 (Video)
  • UCI Stories Video Oral Histories Collection: Marjorie Caserio & Vy Dong, 2016 (Video)
  • Adventures in C-H Bond Activation, talk at the Center for Selective C-H Functionalization, 2016 (Video)
  • Adventures in C-H Bond Activation, talk at the ACS - Division of Organic Chemistry, 2020 (Video)

References edit

  1. ^ a b c Dong, Phi. "The Dong Research Group - About Professor Vy M. Dong". chem.uci.edu. Retrieved 2018-11-04.
  2. ^ a b "Professor Vy Dong | Merck, Sharp & Dohme Award winner 2020". Royal Society of Chemistry. Retrieved 2021-06-09.
  3. ^ a b "2019 National Award Recipients - American Chemical Society". American Chemical Society. Retrieved 2018-11-04.
  4. ^ a b "Professor Vy Dong to receive the 2019 ACS E.J. Corey Award | UCI Department of Chemistry". chem.uci.edu. Retrieved 2018-11-04.
  5. ^ a b "Dong and Evans lauded | UCI Department of Chemistry". www.chem.uci.edu. April 17, 2018. Retrieved 2021-06-09.
  6. ^ a b "UCI Lauds and Laurels Distinguished Alumni Award | UCI Department of Chemistry". www.chem.uci.edu. Retrieved 2021-06-09.
  7. ^ a b "Vy M. Dong | ps.uci.edu". ps.uci.edu. Retrieved 2018-11-04.
  8. ^ a b Taylor, Alexandra A. (April 30, 2019). "Career Ladder: Vy Dong". cen.acs.org. Retrieved 2021-05-14.
  9. ^ a b "UCI Magazine Fall 2018 -- The American Dream". Issuu. Retrieved 2018-11-04.
  10. ^ a b "2016 Agnes Fay Morgan Research Award" (PDF). IOTA Sigma Pi. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-11-05. Retrieved 2018-11-04.
  11. ^ Yoon, Tehshik P.; Dong, Vy M.; MacMillan, David W. C. (1999-10-01). "Development of a New Lewis Acid-Catalyzed Claisen Rearrangement". Journal of the American Chemical Society. 121 (41): 9726–9727. doi:10.1021/ja9919884. ISSN 0002-7863.
  12. ^ Dong, Vy M.; MacMillan, David W. C. (2001). "Design of a New Cascade Reaction for the Construction of Complex Acyclic Architecture: The Tandem Acyl-Claisen Rearrangement". Journal of the American Chemical Society. 123 (10): 2448–2449. doi:10.1021/ja005925t. ISSN 0002-7863. PMID 11456904.
  13. ^ Maria, Dong, Vy (2004). Novel Variants of the Zwitterionic Claisen Rearrangement and the Total Synthesis of Erythronolide B. thesis.library.caltech.edu (phd). doi:10.7907/AR3C-3566. Retrieved 2018-11-04.{{cite thesis}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  14. ^ "Vy Dong | UCI Stories". ucistories.lib.uci.edu. Retrieved 2018-11-04.
  15. ^ Dong, Vy M.; Fiedler, Dorothea; Carl, Barbara; Bergman, Robert G.; Raymond, Kenneth N. (2006-10-18). "Molecular Recognition and Stabilization of Iminium Ions in Water". Journal of the American Chemical Society. 128 (45): 14464–14465. doi:10.1021/ja0657915. ISSN 0002-7863. PMC 2562236. PMID 17090022.
  16. ^ Shen, Zengming; Khan, Hasan A.; Dong, Vy M. (2008-03-01). "Rh-Catalyzed Carbonyl Hydroacylation: An Enantioselective Approach to Lactones". Journal of the American Chemical Society. 130 (10): 2916–2917. doi:10.1021/ja7109025. ISSN 0002-7863. PMID 18278919.
  17. ^ "Awards & Distinctions". chem.utoronto.ca. Retrieved 2018-11-04.
  18. ^ "Vy M. Dong". 化学空间 Chem-Station. 2015-06-02. Retrieved 2018-11-04.
  19. ^ "Never shut down another person's ideas". Chemistry World. Retrieved 2018-11-04.
  20. ^ Murphy, Stephen K.; Bruch, Achim; Dong, Vy M. (2014). "Substrate-Directed Hydroacylation: Rhodium-Catalyzed Coupling of Vinylphenols and Nonchelating Aldehydes". Angewandte Chemie International Edition. 53 (9): 2455–2459. doi:10.1002/anie.201309987. ISSN 1433-7851. PMC 4140243. PMID 24478146.
  21. ^ "Round-the-ring catalysis makes cyclic peptides chiral". Chemistry World. Retrieved 2018-11-04.
  22. ^ Le, Diane N.; Hansen, Eric; Khan, Hasan A.; Kim, Byoungmoo; Wiest, Olaf; Dong, Vy M. (2018). "Hydrogenation catalyst generates cyclic peptide stereocentres in sequence". Nature Chemistry. 10 (9): 968–973. Bibcode:2018NatCh..10..968L. doi:10.1038/s41557-018-0089-5. ISSN 1755-4330. PMC 6824594. PMID 30061616.
  23. ^ Chen, Zhiwei; Dong, Vy M. (2017). "Enantioselective semireduction of allenes". Nature Communications. 8 (1): 784. Bibcode:2017NatCo...8..784C. doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00793-0. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC 5627242. PMID 28978908.
  24. ^ Cruz, Faben A.; Dong, Vy M. (2017). "Stereodivergent Coupling of Aldehydes and Alkynes via Synergistic Catalysis Using Rh and Jacobsen's Amine". Journal of the American Chemical Society. 139 (3): 1029–1032. doi:10.1021/jacs.6b10680. ISSN 0002-7863. PMC 9141309. PMID 28074655.  
  25. ^ a b "Eli Lilly Young Investigator Lecture - Professor Vy Dong | UW-Madison Department of Chemistry". chem.wisc.edu. Retrieved 2018-11-04.
  26. ^ Anon (2011). "Franco-Spanish Prize: C. Nájera / ACS Pure Chemistry Award: M. S. Sanford / AstraZeneca Award in Chemistry: V. M. Dong". Angewandte Chemie International Edition. 50 (4): 801. doi:10.1002/anie.201006893. ISSN 1433-7851.
  27. ^ Roche (May 23, 2011). "Roche Symposium Showcases Accomplishments of Next Generation of Chemists". prnewswire.com. Retrieved 2018-11-04.
  28. ^ "Faculty Awards | UCI Department of Chemistry". chem.uci.edu. Retrieved 2018-11-04.
  29. ^ "Awards for Professionals". iotasigmapi.info. Archived from the original on 2017-08-22. Retrieved 2018-11-04.
  30. ^ "Chemical Science welcomes Vy Dong as Associate Editor – Chemical Science Blog". blogs.rsc.org. Retrieved 2018-11-04.