Graduate Students Old

 Fifth Years

Ryan Kozlowski

We believe Ryan was born on some obscure lengthy island somewhere on the East coast, but we really can’t be entirely sure due to his strange dialect. What we have ascertained, however, is that he single-handedly carved a dugout canoe to escape said island after he depleted their Kool-Aid supplies; in the process, he grew what has to be the most complete beard the Vanderwal lab has ever seen. (Seriously, is that what it takes to grow a beard??) After capsizing sometime in the night while trying to make yet another peanut butter and jelly sandwich, he washed up onto the shore of Delaware and was promptly taken to the lab of Professor Don Watson to work on copper-catalyzed coupling reactions of alkylboronates. Ryan has since found his way to sunny Southern California, where he still professes his love for sports teams that are thousands of miles and several time zones away. He maintains peak physical performance by playing Civilization all day, hoping someday to destroy the empire of the person who wrote this biography. Lastly, he claims to have a medical condition that forces him to eat constantly, but we all know better than that.

Darius Vrubliauskas

[2017-20 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship]

Darius was born in Kaunas, Lithuania. Upon hearing wonderful things about America, he packed up and moved to Philadelphia and was immediately disappointed. To deal with having to live in Philly, Darius took to playing chess so he wouldn’t have to look around. While furiously honing his chess skills, Darius developed a taste for foods that could be prepared without looking away from the board—canned lentil soup and prepackaged juice smoothies. Darius breaks his gaze from the chess board for only two reasons—to conduct chemistry, and to do chin-ups. He began his chemistry career in the Sieburth lab at Temple, and joined the Vanderwal group in 2017. His hobbies now include botany and winning chess matches against grown men named Sunshine.

 Fourth Years

Natalie Dwulet

[2017-21 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship]

Born in California to a family of roving vagabonds, Natalie was promptly whisked off to France for the early years of her life. It was undoubtedly during this time that she was taught the Communist arts of drinking La Croix (“Lah Kwah”) and eating root vegetables. Such a diet allowed her to grow to epic proportions, which she leveraged to become a volleyball star here in the great state of California. Upon completing her undergraduate degree under the tutelage of Professor Jeff Cannon while working on the synthesis of unnatural amino acids, she had the unique distinction of becoming one of only 5,000 students to come to UCI from Occidental in the year of 2017. After a brief stint working on highly oxygenated natural products, she has now switched her focus towards more carbon-based natural products. Her hobbies include proctoring exams on Sundays, scheduling Riley’s activities, shotgunning La Croix, listening to Africa by Toto on endless repeat, and hiking.

Riley Mills

Riley was born and raised a good Southern California boy in the heart of Orange with a love for touristy fish shirts, karaoke and craft beer. He received his Bachelor’s degree at the University of California, San Diego and during his senior years conducted research at Scripps, La Jolla, developing a methodology utilizing radical decarboxylations to form carbon-carbon bonds, and then took an internship at Takeda Pharmaceuticals. Since Riley has never left SoCal, and his electric car cannot take him very far, he joined our group at UC Irvine where he has taken up the synthesis of alkaloid natural products and the role of pyrrole annulator. He has officially given meaning to the term “Wild West Chemistry” as he can be found by following the trails of grease and broken glassware. Other than chemistry, Riley has created a cult where he has titled himself “dungeon master,” and his favorite hobby is spear-fishing even though he’s never done it before. When not singing 90s love ballads, he can be found consulting his secretary, Natalie, about his daily schedule and responsibilities.

 Third Years

Joe Capani Jr.

A born and bred New Yorker, you’ll know Joe has arrived when you hear the shouts of “I’m walkin’ here!” as the smell of an everything bagel with cream cheese fills the lab. After growing up in the small, upstate New York town of Binghamton Joe sought out something equally as mundane and moved to the smallest state in the Union to attend Brown University. There, Joe made monolayer polymers, which we’re all convinced are just fancy sheets of plastic. Joe came to UCI with the goal of making the world’s best plastic but once he realized that was already accomplished (PVC, duh…), he saw the light and is now gung-ho on natural product synthesis. On a daily basis Joe can be found slaving over his data thinking, “is it grease or is it my natty p?” Nobody knows exactly where the grease came from or even if it’s his natural product, but one thing’s for sure, nobody’s hood shines quite like Joe’s. Nevertheless, with big dreams (or as he describes them “constant night terrors”) of geminal radical couplings, the Caponster hopes to shake the world of diterpene synthesis. Joe can also be found arguing with mechanics over the phone or just generally raging about his bucket of bolts to anyone who will listen. While not in lab, Joe enjoys getting swole at the gym, shouting “send it bro!”, and cooking decadent meals to pair with his homebrew. 

Scott Niman

“Big Papi” Scott was born in the rain, raised in the rain and will likely die in the rain, which is about what you’d expect from someone from Portland. Scott triple jumped his way out of Oregon and headed south to sunny Los Angeles to study at Occidental College. He occidentally (get it?) got a degree in chemistry while working on the total synthesis of amino sugar natural products. During his time in the Cannon lab he spent most of his days grinding almonds instead of doing real chemistry research. Since joining the Vanderwal lab, Scott spends 50% of his time working on the total synthesis of immunosuppressive diterpenoids and the other 50% cleaning his apartment, going to Costco, and following Ryan into grocery stores. Scott’s hobbies include listening to the song “Scotty Doesn’t Know”, skiing, throwing javelins, and eating a lifetime supply of pretzels out of a novelty sized barrel.  If you come to the lab late at night, you just might catch Scott grinding up almonds in his fume hood — old habits die hard.

Bonnie Pak

Over two decades ago a hiker lifted a rock in the desert and out scurried Bonnie Pak.  A desert rat through and through, there was concern that any attempt to remove Bonnie from her natural environment, Palm Springs, California would kill her as she cannot survive in other biomes.  Fortunately, she was accepted to UC San Diego where she was able to get enough sun to keep her blood warm while following Riley from class to class. Between her research in the Burkart lab synthesizing protein linkers and her time as a medicinal chemist at Takeda Pharmaceuticals Bonnie spent most of her college career being as srat as possible.  Bonnie continued appeasing her cold-blooded nature by moving up to sunny Irvine for graduate school, joining the Vanderwal lab in hopes of making as many analogues of the lissoclimides as physically possible. Since joining the lab, Bonnie has started day drinking on Sundays and is taking on as many nicknames as there are words that start with B; to name a few: The Bean, B-Money, Bon-Bon, Brawnie, Lebronnie James, and Bonasaurus Rex.

 Second Years

Griffin Barnes

Griffin was born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and at a young age sprouted eagles wings off of his lion body and set to the skies. Looking for greater challenges, he set his sights on conquering the Atlantic by joining a competitive fishing team. While obtaining his Bachelor’s degree from UNC Chapel Hill, this mythical creature studied cancer therapeutics and organic photovoltaic materials. Naturally, after Griffin “Great White” Barnes conquered all the Atlantic fishes, his attention turned to the Pacific, inspiring him to move out west to Irvine, California. During his spare time he is found using similar fishing tactics to conquer alkaloid beasts. The “Great White” has found his Moby Dick with halogenated alkaloids, sometimes bringing in his fishing spear to prod his reactions to go faster. In order to be in tip top fishing shape, he is often seen meal-prepping large amounts of whatever Griffins eat and engaging in pull up competitions with Darius to gain that sweet, sweet mass. 

Lucas Johnson

Like the thousands of surfers that have come before him, Lucas’ ideal day is hitting the waves, grabbing a fish taco and cruising on into the lab to synthesize polyketide probes. Lucas was born at the beach and seemingly never left. His first words were “kilauea” and his first steps were to stand up on his board while actively surfing. Overcoming his anxiety of leaving the beach, Lucas traveled to Santa Cruz to visit a different beach but accidentally got a Bachelor’s Degree in anthropology, the study of anthros. He decided one college degree just wasn’t enough so he went to ASU to get his degree in biochemistry. I’m not saying anyone’s counting but that’s more Bachelor’s Degrees than you have, Chris. Seemingly confused about what the word “landlocked” means, Lucas found himself with enough time on his hands to get some work done on peptide and alkaloid synthesis in the Pettit lab. As if he were contractually obligated to, Lucas returned to the California coast to get some medicinal chemistry experience at Takeda Pharmaceuticals. The Vanderwal Lab clearly prefers to recruit from their med chem interns (e.g. Bonnie and Riley), because it wasn’t long before Chris snatched up another one and set Lucas to work on polyketide probes and polyene cyclizations. As a boomer turned zoomer, Lucas can be found playing chess, sending memes, and tuning into meetings from a surfboard.

Bonnie Park

From a young age, Bonnie hatched an ingenious plan. After spending the majority of her early life in Seoul, South Korea, Bonnie set her sights on attending USC and knew just the way to do it. After convincing Lori Loughlin that she was her long lost daughter, Bonnie made her way first to New York, then to Irvine and then LA. Having hoodwinked Lori, Bonnie was granted admission to her dream school of USC. While there, she investigated palladium-catalyzed cross coupling reactions. Despite having already spent quite a bit of her childhood in Seoul, she realized she couldn’t locate it on a map. Before returning to Irvine, she spent the next 8 months backpacking the world on her “Seoul” searching quest. She never did seem to find it though…. Loving Southern California, and running out of college admissions funds, she returned to Irvine for graduate school, although she staunchly claims she had no idea she would return to her previous city of residence. Since joining, she has worked on alkaloid synthesis and has taken up the unusual and uncommon hobbies of playing sports, watching Netflix, and chilling at the beach.

Jane Supantanapong

Jane was born and raised in Chumphon, Thailand (quite the resort destination according to Google images). She moved to Hat Yai (extremely beautiful; source: google images) to complete a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry and then to Bangkok (breathtaking) where she earned a Master’s degree in chemical biology. She was sick of all the amazing sights that plagued her everyday. She had to find it, the one place she could do chemistry in peace that wasn’t so distractingly awe-inspiring. Like many before her, she underestimated Irvine, California. As she stepped off of the plane, Jane sighed in relief as she looked around at the suburbs before her. Unfortunately, her peace was short lived as she looked two miles to the south to see the magnificent, horrible ocean mocking her once again. She ran the other direction, but only made it an hour before her hopes were dashed by the mountains capped in resplendent snow that she had now witnessed for the first time in her life. To Jane, she was a prisoner in this beautiful world, never able to escape the sights of paradise that surrounds her. But for now, she is comfortable enough with putting her head down and smiling at the grey interior of the fume hood she lives in.

First Years

Hanh Nguyen