Andrew Hoover
Biography
I was born in 1987 in Connecticut, and grew up there, as well as in Massachusetts and Maryland. I had excellent high school chemistry teachers, and decided to major in chemistry upon coming to the University of Illinois in the fall of 2005.
I began research activity during the summer of 2006 with S.K. Silverman, investigating the catalysis of bioorganic reactions by DNA, namely the synthesis of RNA macromolecules, with support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. I continued work with professor Silverman until the summer of 2007, when I traveled to Berkeley under an Amgen scholarship and worked with R. Sarpong developing synthetic methodology to expand the utility of a Platinum-catalyzed cyclopentenone synthesis from acyloxy-pyrans.
Inspired by my experience at Berkeley, I decided to continue my training in synthetic organic chemistry and joined the Denmark group in the fall of 2007. Currently I am creating and studying new Lewis basic catalysts that activate Lewis acids for the enantioselective functionalization of prochiral alkenes, for example, in reactions such as haloetherification and selenolactonization.
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