Melissa Ramirez, Ph.D.
Computational & synthetic organic chemist
About Me
I obtained my B. A. in chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania in 2016. While at UPenn, I received scholarships through the Gates Millennium Program and American Chemical Society Scholars Program and conducted undergraduate research in the laboratory of Professor Gary Molander. Thereafter, I attended UCLA and was trained as a computational and synthetic organic chemist in the laboratories of Professors Ken Houk and Neil Garg. While at UCLA, I was awarded NIH F31 Ruth L. Kirschstein and UCLA Eugene V. Cota Robles Fellowships, obtaining my Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 2021. Currently, I am an NIH K99/R00 MOSAIC Scholar, NSF MPS-Ascend Fellow, and Caltech Presidential Postdoctoral Scholar in the group of Professor Brian Stoltz. As a postdoc in the Stoltz laboratory, my research focuses on the development of catalytic methods for enantioselective quaternary center formation using a combination of experiments and computations.
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I am starting the Ramirez laboratory in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities this January 2025 and am hiring graduate students and postdoctoral scholars!
I am excited to train the next generation of synthetic and computational organic chemists. As a first-generation Latina born to Mexican immigrants, I am especially excited about building a diverse and inclusive environment in my research group.