2020 - The Year of COVID

  • December 14 – Congratulations to former graduate student Dr. Charissa Munteanu on her new position as a Senior Scientist in the Discovery Process Group at Merck!! Good luck Charissa and we look forward to seeing you continue to make impactful discoveries at Merck!!
  • November 20 – Congratulations to 4th year graduate student Nick Clanton, Griffin Foultz (visiting undergrad), and Julie Contreras (UTSA undergrad) for their recent publication in ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters on the discovery of novel electrophilic steroids as potential anti-neoplastic agents. Big shout out to our collaborator, Dr. April Risinger at UT Health SA, who made this work possible! Their work was highlighted as a Supplementary Cover as well! Read the ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters article and learn about their work.
  • November 13 – Check out our latest collaborative work in Nature Medicine with Dr. Jay Schneider at the Mayo Clinic on the discovery of a new genetic basis for RBM20 dilated cardiomyopathy based on the formation of RNA granules that was previously only attributed to neurodegenerative diseases. Access the Nature Medicine article directly and learn about this potentially ground-breaking discovery.
  • July 14 – Congratulations to Dr. Charissa Munteanu and Taylor Spiller (undergrad) on their recent collaborative work with the Chemical Process Development (CPD) group at Bristol Myers Squibb that was just published as a Feature Article in the Journal of Organic Chemistry!!!! Read the Journal of Organic Chemistry article and learn about a great "user's guide" to catalytic borylations!
  • July 10 – Congratulations to Dr. Frantz for securing $883,000 to establish the Max and Minnie Tomerlin Voelcker Preclinical Pharmacology Core for Accelerated Drug Discovery at UTSA. The new core will be the latest addition to the Center for Innovative Drug Discovery (CIDD) to assist academic and industrial efforts to translate basic discoveries at the bench into tangible bedside treatments for various diseases including COVID-19, cancer, heart disease,neurodegeneration and more!

2019

  • December 22 – Congratulations to Charissa Munteanu on successfully defending her dissertation!! The 7th PhD student to walk out of the Frantz lab at UTSA!
  • August 5 – Congratulations to Charissa Munteanu on having her most recent paper highlighted in the August 5, 2019 issue of C&E News!! Read Charissa's paper here!!
  • July 5 – Congrats to Charissa Munteanu for her recent publication in the Journal of Natural Products on the synthesis of pericosine A derivatives in collaboration with Prof. Robert Cichewicz at the University of Oklahoma. Access Charissa's paper.
  • May 3 – Congratulations to the Frantz Group on receiving a grant from the Welch Foundation to continue our pursuit in the catalytic synthesis of substituted allenes!!
  • May 1 – Congratulations to Charissa Munteanu for being selected to attend this year's ACS Division of Organic Chemistry Graduate Research Symposium (GRS) being held at Duke University in July!!
  • March 18 – Congratulations to Christian Strong (undergrad) who has been accepted into MIT’s Summer Research Program for 2019 where he will be working in Tim Jamison's lab!!!
  • March 8 – Congratulations to Dr. Robynne (Bobbi) K. Neff on her NIH postdoctoral fellowship to work with Prof. Greg Fu at Caltech!! Good luck Bobbi... we know you’ll do great!!!

2018

  • December 9 – Congratulations to Dr. Robynne (Bobbi) K. Neff on her recent work on the cationic alkynyl Heck reaction to access allenes that was just accepted to the Journal of the American Chemical Society!! Read Bobbi's Communication and learn about our new Pd(0)-catalyst "BobCat."
    2018 cover art
    Cover art designed by Dr. Robynne (Bobbi) K. Neff
  • December 5 – Congratulations to Dr. Ana Cristina Parra Rivera for accepting a position as a process chemist with J-Star Research in New Jersey!!!
  • November 28 – Congratulations to Dr. Ana Cristina Parra Rivera for successfully defending her dissertation!!
  • November 7 – Congratulations to Ana Cristina Parra Rivera on her collaborative work with the CSD group at Bristol-Myers Squibb that was accepted to The Journal of Organic Chemistry as a Featured Article and also was selected as a Supplemental Cover of JOC!!!! Access Ana's paper.
  • September 11 – Congratulations to Dr. Marie El Arba and Sara Dibrell for their recent work on the Ru(II)-catalyzed synthesis of furans being accepted to Organic Letters!! Read their Organic Letters paper.
  • August 1 – Congratulations to Dr. Marie El Arba for being offered a Visiting Professor position at Trinity University!!!
  • May 18 – Congratulations to Dr. Marie El Arba for successfully defending her dissertation!!
  • May 1 – Congratulations to Sara Dibrell for being accepted to Merck's summer internship program!
  • April 1 – Congratulations to Sara Dibrell for accepting an offer to join the graduate program for the fall of 2018 at Caltech!!!!
  • March 1 – Congratulations to Sara Dibrell for receiving an award from the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)!!! Way to go Sara!!!!!