People

Adelina Voutchkova-Kostal

PhD Yale University 2008
BS Middlebury College 2004

Before starting her career at GWU in 2012, Adelina was a Research Associate and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Yale Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering, focusing on the rational design of functional commercial chemicals with  minimal biological activity. Prior to that, she completed her PhD in organometallic chemistry in Yale with Bob Crabtree, focusing on atom-economical catalytic transformations facilitated by NHC complexes. She earned her BA from Middlebury College, where she worked with Prof. Sunhee Choi on the chemistry of Pt anticancer complexes.  Her research program at GWU  spans the two frontiers of green chemistry – development of green synthetic methods through supported  catalysis, as well as the development of predictive methods for  identifying chemicals of  toxicological concern. She is the recipient of NSF CAREER award, the 2020 Early Career Researcher Award from GWU and the 2021 Thieme Chemistry Journals Award, among others.

Group members

Darren Dolan, PhD candidate

Lara Skibbie (PhD Candidate – joint with Dowd group)

Rebekah Brucato, Graduate student (B.S. ’17, Univ. of North Georgia)

“When all else fails, try the boss’s suggestion.”

Unnamed group alum

Alumni
 (PhD and postdocs in blue)

Kai Wang (PhD 2022, Postdoctoral researcher at FDA)

Dr. Jonathan Horlyck (Senior research scientist, Johns Hopkins Univ)
Dr. Diana Ainembabazi (’20 PhD, Postdoctoral Associate Univ. of Illinois)
Anna Steiner (’20, BS/MS Forensics)
Keira Culley (B.S. 2020, Univ. of Colorado PhD)
Christopher Reid (B.S. 2020, UVA PhD)
Miren Lopez (B.S. 2020, MPH Candidate)
Dr. Jacob Heltzel (Senior Engineer, Merck Process Chemistry)
Helia Imani ’19 (UCLA Medical School)
Evan Sandefur ’19 (Medical Tech, Instructor)
Dr. Matthew Finn: ’18, PhD (Navy Research Lab, group of Albert Epshteyn)
Dr. Nan An: ’18, PhD (FDA Contractor, Chemist/Toxicologist, Goldbelt C6, LLC)

Shane Pracar, ’18
Sarah Chachula: ’18 (Dartmouth PhD)
Kavya Samudrala: ’18 (UC Irvine PhD)
Krishna Kesari – Transfer
Hannah Yi: ’16 (U Chicago Phd)
Jenna Sartucci ’16 (Georgetown U PhD)
Adebola Adeniyi ’16 (MS Layola Chicagi)
Aneta Kowalski ’14: NIH Researcher
Arturo Azua (Res. Assoc., Research Foundation CUNY)
Philip Cho ’14 (Biologist, Sigfried Irvine)
Alex Moran ’14 (PhD in Epidemiology, UCLA)
Tom Savage ’13: MD Candidate
Yuechuan (Tony) Tang ’14 (MS Mathematics Finance Boston Univ)
Farid Van Der Mei ’13: PhD Boston College, Scientist Calgene Pharma
Catherine Munro ’12 (PhD Univ of Miami, Postdoc Khalifa Univ)
Monica Mehte ’12
Jaishri Atri ’12 (Consultant, Deloitte)

Scientific Genealogy

Thanks to Bob Crabtree for sharing!

Group Pictures

2020 (pre-Pandemic), with Prof. Gabriel Lemcoff (visiting scientist) and baby Kaya

2018

Research posters 2019