The Wittig Group

Curt Wittig

I was born and raised on the near north side of Chicago — brought nothing but misery into the lives of my teachers, and caused my parents to age at a quickened rate. Due to a clerical error, I got into the University of Illinois, first at Chicago (Navy Pier), then Urbana-Champaign, ultimately receiving the PhD in EE in 1970. Postdoctoral work (EE at USC, Chemistry at Cambridge (UK) and Berkeley) was followed by a faculty appointment in 1973 at USC in the EE Department.

Jaimie Stomberg

I graduated with a B.A. in Chemistry from Grinnell College in 2009. While an undergraduate, I carried out research in the Chemistry and Physics Departments at Grinnell, and spent the summer of 2008 as an REU student at USC in the group of Professor Kyung Jung. This research was focused on the synthesis of novel ligands for palladium catalysts.

Bill Schroeder

I received a B.S. in Chemistry in 2004 from Missouri Western State College (now Missouri Western State University) in St. Joseph, MO. My work there was focused in analytical and physical chemistry, and I worked as an analytical chemist while completing my degree. During my time as an undergraduate, I did research at IUPUI in computational chemistry for Prof. Clifford Dykstra and at UNC-Chapel Hill in analytical/physical chemistry for Prof. Mark Schoenfisch.

Naihao Chiang

I am an undergraduate majoring in Physics and Chemistry, as well as a program that will result in degrees in Mathematics and Economics. From Fall 2007 to Fall 2008, I worked under the guidance of Professor Grace Lu in the Physics Department. My reseach project there focused on the synthesis of metal nano-wires by using an electric deposition technique in porous anodic aluminum oxide.

Chris Nemirow

I grew up in Massachusetts and studied Chemistry and Math at Worcester State, graduating in 2004. In 2003, I attended an ACS Summer School for Nuclear and Radio Chemistry (held at San Jose State University, funded by DOE): an introduction to particle physics, nuclear power and medicine, and environmental radiochemistry. At Worcester, pitcher plants (Sarracenia purpurea) were studied using NMR, with results presented at the Massachusetts 10th Annual Undergraduate Conference.

Stephanie McKean

I grew up in Piedmont, California, in the beautiful Oakland Hills overlooking San Francisco. Until I took chemistry as a Junior in high school, my college plan was to major in French. Taking chemistry and then physics changed my mind (alongside the desire for eventual employment), and I enrolled at DePaul University, in Chicago, for the Fall of ’05.

Oscar Rebolledo-Mayoral

In Spring 2006 I received a BS in Chemical Physics from UC San Diego with a minor in Law and Society. I also worked under the guidance of Stanley Opella and Amy Sung as a McNair Fellow on a collaborative project between the Biochemistry and Bioengineering departments. This research focused on method development for the isolation and purification of human Tropomyosin isoform 5 (hTM5) and its mutated homologues. NMR was used to shed light on the structure and mechanisms for malformation of hemoglobin to better understand diseases such as leukemia and sickle-cell anemia.

Jordan Fine

Born in Redlands, CA I grew up participating in a number of physical activities, like baseball, snowboarding, hunting …, that I still enjoy today. I graduated high school at sixteen and immediately enrolled in community college, because I enjoyed school, but loathed the social environment. At community college my love for math and science flourished. I am fascinated with physical phenomena, and how they are mathematically modeled. I completed my undergraduate education at the University of California San Diego.

Current Projects

Cold Water

Curt Wittig and Hanna Reisler

Water presents daunting scientific challenges and at the same time it is of enormous societal importance. There is more methane clathrate in ocean sediments than all other natural gas reserves on earth combined. The good news is that a large energy supply is identified that, upon combustion, has the lowest CO₂ : H₂O ratio of any hydrocarbon.

Hydrocarbon Radicals

The C₂H radical is an excellent prototype for examining important phenomena: electronic states; curve crossings and nonadiabatic transitions; intramolecular and dissociation dynamics; and so on. It is small enough to provide experimental parent and product state resolution, and it is tractable at a high level of theory: both electronic structure and quantum mechanical nuclear dynamics, including nonadiabatic couplings.