Organic Chemistry Seminar: Professor Ramesh Jasti, University of Oregon

Organic Chemistry Seminar: Professor Ramesh Jasti, University of Oregon (Host: Yan Xia)

"Nanohoops as New Architectures in Molecular and Materials Design"

About the Seminar

In their simplest form, nanohoops can be thought of as short slices of carbon nanotubes.  In this lecture, I will describe my research group’s impetus for developing synthetic methods to prepare a wide range of these types of structures. I will also detail the unique size-dependent properties of these molecules, which are direct manifestations of the unusual radially oriented π-systems.  Finally, I will share our most recent results to elaborate this new class of nanoscale building blocks into materials with unique function.

About the Speaker

Ramesh Jasti was born in Concord, North Carolina (1st generation in the United States) and attended the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill as an undergraduate.  At UNC, Prof. Jasti synthesized and characterized gold nanoparticles in the laboratories of Professor Royce Murray.  This early research experience sowed the seeds of his future interests in interdisciplinary research and nanoscience.  After graduation in 1998, Professor Jasti worked at a start-up pharmaceutical company for three years in the Research Triangle Park.  Having found great interest in organic synthesis, Prof. Jasti conducted his graduate education under the guidance of Professor Scott Rychnovsky at the University of California, Irvine.  Prof. Jasti’s graduate research led to the unraveling of numerous mechanistic aspects of the Prins cyclization reaction.  After obtaining his PhD in 2006, Prof. Jasti was a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Carolyn Bertozzi at The Molecular Foundry, at the time a brand new nanoscience institute at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.  At Berkeley, he began to explore the concept of attacking problems in nanoscience utilizing organic synthesis as an enabling tool.  This basic idea continues to be the overarching theme of the Jasti Research Group. Professor Jasti has been a recent recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, and Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, as well as a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.