Personnel

Dr. Vladimir Gevorgyan

Director of HT-RDS Center

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Vladimir Gevorgyan is the Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair in Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), and a professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW). With over 30 years in academia, Vladimir has published more than 200 scientific papers, delivered over 150 lectures at conferences and universities around the globe—including honorary and named lectures—and has been heavily involved in pharmaceutical industry consulting. His research group focuses on developing novel synthetic methods for creating biologically significant densely substituted heterocycles and advancing C–H functionalization techniques for complex organic molecules.

Vladimir earned his PhD in Chemistry from the Latvian Institute of Organic Synthesis and completed postdoctoral training as a JSPS and Ciba-Geigy International Fellow at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan.

Dr. Rudi Fasan

Deputy Director of HT-RDS Center

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Rudi Fasan is Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair in Chemistry and CPRIT Scholar in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). Dr. Fasan received his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and completed postdoctoral training as a Swiss National Science Foundation fellow at the California Institute of Technology. He established his independent career in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Rochester (2008-2023), where he was the inaugural recipient of the Andrew S. Kende endowed Chair in Synthetic Organic Chemistry and director of a NIH- funded T32 program in Chemistry-Biology Interface. In 2023, Dr. Fasan moved to UTD as a recipient of the CPRIT Established Investigator award. He authored more than 100 scientific papers and book chapters and he is inventor in several international patents and patent applications. His research group focuses on developing novel biocatalytic methodologies for asymmetric synthesis and chemoenzymatic strategies for the late-stage C-H functionalization of natural products and diversity oriented synthesis of complex natural product-like molecules.

Dr. Nikita Kvasovs

Associate Director of HT-RDS Center

Nikita Kvasovs serves as the Associate Director of the High-Throughput Reaction Discovery and Synthesis Center at UTD. With over a decade of experience in organic synthesis, Nikita has gained deep expertise in reaction discovery, optimization, and the development of novel reactions, including those involving photo- and transition metal catalysis. His research interests strongly rooted in data science, with a particular emphasis on leveraging high-throughput experimentation.

Nikita earned his PhD in Chemistry from UTD in 2023 and played a key role in the establishment of the HT-RDS center at the University.

Dr. Filippo (Filo) Romiti

Assistant Professor, Chemistry

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Filippo (Filo) Romiti is an Assistant Professor in Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) and Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) Scholar since June 2022, and a Collaborator of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW). His research group focuses on the development of out-of-the-box synthesis logics and novel chemical methods to facilitate the synthesis of complex bioactive natural products and analogs thereof.

Filo earned his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Glasgow, UK, under the guidance of Prof. Stephen Clark and completed postdoctoral training at Boston College in the group of Prof. Amir Hoveyda and in collaboration with Prof. Richard Schrock, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2005. From January 2019 until May 2022, he was Senior Research Associate at the Supramolecular Science and Engineering Institute at the University of Strasbourg, France, where he managed and supervised the European branch of the Hoveyda group.

Dr. Connor Delaney

Assistant Professor, Chemistry

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Connor Delaney is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at UTD. His research focuses on fundamental mechanisms in organometallic chemistry and transition-metal catalysis. The insights gained from these studies will contribute to developing new methods, especially cycloaddition reactions toward abiotic nucleoside and nucleotide analogs.

Before joining UTD in August 2023, Connor carried out his PhD studies under the direction of Prof. Scott E. Denmark at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, then moved to the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellow under the direction of Professor John F. Hartwig.

Dr. Alistair Sterling

Assistant Professor, Chemistry

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Alistair Sterling is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at The University of Texas at Dallas. His research combines computational modelling, theoretical physical organic chemistry and electronic structure theory to advance our understanding of chemical reactivity. He focuses on applications from catalyst design and drug discovery to the development of functional materials, using a bespoke toolkit that integrates quantum chemistry, automation, and data science tools, including artificial intelligence techniques such as machine learning. He enjoys interdisciplinary collaborations with researchers across diverse fields, from synthetic, medicinal and supramolecular chemists in academia and industry, to chemical physicists and applied mathematicians.

Alistair received his DPhil in Organic Chemistry from the University of Oxford under the guidance of Profs. Fernanda Duarte and Ed Anderson in 2021. Following his graduate studies, he was awarded an EPSRC Doctoral Prize postdoctoral fellowship. He completed his postdoctoral training with a joint appointment at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the University of California, Berkeley with Prof. Martin Head-Gordon.