Biography

Amanda grew up in sunny southern California, where she discovered her love of hot, dry weather. She started college at Saddleback College, and then transferred to California State University Fullerton, where she graduated with a B.S. in chemistry in 2010. During her undergrad, she worked for Christopher Hyland on gold-catalyzed cyclization reactions of cyclopropenyl amines, and was bitten by the organometallic bug. She spent the summer of 2009 working for Matt Sigman at the University of Utah, and realized how cool palladium is. Naturally, she then went to the University of Michigan to work for Melanie Sanford to work on palladium-catalyzed C-H activation reactions, and after braving five long, dark, cold winters and discovering what snow is, she received her Ph.D. Amanda then decided to move to Switzerland, where she was a post-doctoral fellow in the group of Christophe Coperet, worked on heterogeneously catalyzed hydroamination reactions, and decided that snow isn't so bad, if you have mountains to ski on.  Amanda moved back to the west coast to begin her independent career at the University of Oregon, where she is learning to keep plants alive and to love IPAs (not really) and pinot noir (definitely). The research in her group will use the tools of physical organic chemistry, bridge organometallic and surface chemistries, and develop new catalysts for the transformation of organic molecules.