Former members of the García-Garibay Group:
(A) Graduate Students
Thomas Choi, 1993 – 1995, M. S.
Krista Motschiedler, 1993 – 1994, M. S. (Now at La Sierra Univ.)
Krisztina Peterfy, 1995 – 1996, M. S.
Jesper Jernelius, 1995 – 1996, M. S. (Now at Eidos Therapeutics)
Shelli McAlpine, 1994 – 1997, Ph. D. (Now at UNSW)
Amy Keating,* 1994 – 1998, Ph. D. (Now at MIT)
Brent Johnson, 1995 -1999, Ph. D. (Now at Maschoff Brennan)
Krista Motschiedler, 1996 – 2000, Ph. D. (Now at La Sierra Univ.)
Laura Sonnichsen, 1996 – 2001, Ph. D. (Now at Parkland College, Il)
Carlos Enrique Godinez, 1999 – 2001, M. S. (Now at Cal State LA)
Tinh A. Khuong, 1999 – 2001, M. S. (Now at Southwestern College)
Dafni Amirsakis,** 1998 – 2002, Ph. D.
Martha Ellison, 2001 – 2003, M. S. (Now at Bayer)
Hung Dang, 1998 – 2003, Ph. D.
Zhe Yang, 1998 – 2003, Ph. D.
Danny Ng, 1998 – 2003, Ph. D.
Christopher Suhrada,* 2001 – 2005, Ph.D.
Christopher Mortko, 2000 – 2005, Ph.D. (Now at Merck & Co.)
Peter Jarowski, 2002 – 2006, Ph.D. (Now at ChemAlive SA, Switzerland)
Luis M. Campos,* 2001 – 2006, Ph.D. (Now at Columbia Univ.)
Carlos Enrique Godinez, 2001 – 2006, Ph.D.
Tinh A. Kuong, 2001 – 2006, Ph.D. (Now at Southwestern College)
Steven Karlen, 2003 – 2007, Ph.D.
Jose Nuñez, 2001 – 2007, Ph.D.
Howing Leung, 2005 – 2007, M.S.
Farnosh Family, 2005 – 2007, M.S.
Khin Chin, 2003 – 2008, Ph.D. (Now at Bozicevic, Field and Francis, LLP)
Marino Rezendiz, 2003 – 2008, Ph.D. (Now at U. Colorado, Denver)
Miguel A. Jimenez, 2006 – 2008, Ph.D. (Now at El Camino College)
Gregory Kuzmanich, 2006 – 2011, Ph.D. (Now at Honeywell)
Saori Shiraki, 2005 – 2011, Ph.D.
Cortnie Vogelsberg, 2006 – 2012, Ph.D. (Now at Intel Corp)
Amy E. Nielsen, 2012 – 2014, Ph.D.
Ira Staehle, 2008 – 2014, Ph.D.
Patrick Commins, 2019 – 2014, Ph.D. (Now at NYU Abu Dhabi Naumov Group, UAE)
Melissa Hugs, 2008 – 2014, Ph.D.
Alexander Parenzan, 2014 – 2015, M.S.
Xing Jiang, 2011 – 2016, Ph.D.
Geeta Vadehra, 2010 – 2016, Ph.D.
Tim Chung, 2012 – 2017, Ph.D. (Now a Professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania: https://sites.google.com/view/timchungiup/)
Vanessa M. Breslin, 2012 – 2018, Ph.D.
Yang Xue, 2016 – 2018, M.S.
Jin Park, 2013 – 2018, Ph.D.
Annabelle Cantu, 2018 – 2019, M.S.
Morgan Howe, 2014 – 2019, Ph.D. (Now at UW-Madison pursuing chemistry education research with Dr. Sam Pazicni)
Jordan Dotson,*** 2015 – 2020, Ph.D. (Now at the Sigman Research Group)
* Joint student with Prof. K. N. Houk
** Joint student with Prof. J. Fraser Stoddart
*** Joint student with Prof. N. Garg
(B) Postdoctoral Fellows
Alla Gamarnik (UCLA), 1993-1996
Deniz Cizmeciyan (Penn State University), 1994-1996
Marcia Levitus (Univ. Buenos Aires), 1998-2001
Carlos Sanrame (Univ. of Cordoba), 1999-2002
Zaira Dominguez (Inst. Polyt. Nat., Mexico), 2000-2002
Manoj Warrier (Tulane University), 2000-2003
Horacio Reyes (Inst. Polyt. Nat., Mexico), 2004-2005
Thahn Lam (UCSD), 2006-2007
Arunkumar Natarajan (Tulane University), 2005-2007
Stephanie Gould (Arizona State University), 2005-2008
Arif Karim (University of Zurich), 2008-2009
Brianda Barrios (University of California, Davis), 2010-2011
Edgar Escalante (Univ. Nacional Autonoma de Mexico), 2010-2012
Denise de Loera (Univ Autonoma de San Luis Potosi, Mexico), 2011-2013
Antoine Stopin (Universite de Lyon), 2010-2013
Braulio Molina (Inst. Polyt. Nat., Mexico), 2011-2013 (Now at Instituto de Quimica, UNAM. Mexico)
Guadalupe Hernandez (Univ. del Istmo, Oaxaca, Mexico), 2012-2013
Anoklase Ayitou (North Dakota State University), 2013-2016
Salvador Perez (Escuela Nac. De Cienc. Biol., IPN Mexico), 2011-2016
Mingoo Jin (JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow), 2018-2019 (Now Assistant Professor, Faculty of Applied Chemistry, Department of Engineering, Hokkaido University)
(C) Recent Group Members
Nicole Barbour (2015-2018) was an undergraduate student working on photochromic materials. Currently, she is an associate scientist at AbbVie.
Ronnie Garcia (2016-2018) was an undergraduate Chemistry-Materials Science major with a concentration in organic materials. Currently, he is a graduate student in Chemistry at UC Santa Barbara.
Jerika Chong (2017) was a visiting undergradute researcher in the group for the Summer 2017. She is pursuing a degree in Chemistry at UC San Diego.
Salvador Perez-Estrada (Postdoc, 2013-2017) received his Ph.D. in chemical-biological sciences from ENCB-IPN in Mexico in 2010. His research focused on dienyne metathesis and synthesis of chiral derivatizing agents for the determination of absolute configuration by NMR. His research in the MGG group include various aspects molecular dynamics in crystals and solid-state photochemistry.
Vanessa Breslin (Ph.D., 2013-2018) joined the MGG group as a graduate student in the summer of 2013 and studied the photochromic reaction of spiropyrans and carbene precursors in the solid state. She is now a postdoc at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC.
Jin Park (Ph.D., 2013-2018) joined the Garcia-Garibay group in the summer of 2013, and pursued research the field of photochemistry. Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Drug Evaluation and Regulation (CDER) at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Washington, DC
Yang Xue (M.S., 2016-2018) joined the MGG lab in September 2016 and specialized in organic synthesis of MOFs with dipolar ligands. Now at Bayer China Pharmaceuticals
Annabelle Cantu (M.S., 2018-2019) joined the MGG lab in January 2018 and worked on molecular rotors and metal-organic frameworks. Currently she is a Research Associate at Indi Molecular, Inc.
Morgan Howe (Ph.D., 2014-2019) joined the MGG lab in January 2015 and worked on crystalline molecular rotors. Currently, she at UW-Madison doing chemistry education research with Dr. Sam Pazicni
Jordan Dotson (Ph.D., 2015-2020) received his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Western Washington University and worked on the development of gold catalyzed organic reactions in the lab of Dr. Jim Vyvyan. At UCLA he was a joint student with the Garg lab and he researched the synthetic applications of solid state photochemistry with the focus in natural product synthesis. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Sigman Lab at the University of Utah
Prof. John S.-C. Chuang is a visiting scholar from National Chiao Tung University and also an alumnus of UCLA. During his time in the MGG Lab he worked on new molecular rotors with interesting photophysical properties.
Bee Linden (August 2019 -June 2020) worked on dendritic molecular rotors, and was interested in accessible education in chemistry.
Ting Zhang was a visiting graduate researcher from Harbin Institute of Technology. She was at the MGG lab in October 2019-June 2020 and carried out research on artificial molecular machines.
Zhiyu Liu graduated from the MGG lab in 2022. His work focused on dipolar rotors in metal-organic frameworks.
Palak Jariwala was an undergraduate who joined the MGG lab in January 2020 and graduated in 2023.
Marlius Castillo (Cram Teacher-Scholar) joined UCLA in August 2019 as a Cram Teacher-Scholar. She conducted postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Professor Miguel Garcia-Garibay, studying synthesis and applications of fluorescent molecules.
Erik Leonhardt received his PhD from the University of Oregon in 2020 under Professor Ramesh Jasti.
Vince Hipwell was a graduate student who began working in the MGG group in August 2016.
Edris Rivera joined the MGG lab in September 2016.
Trevor Chang joined the MGG group in July 2016.
Marcus Jellen joined the lab in July 2016 and he worked on molecular rotors and metal-organic frameworks.
Ieva Liepuoniute was a joint student between the MGG and the Houk research groups, and was interested in combining computational and experimental methods in materials research. She explored the energetics and rotational dynamics in molecular gears and dipolar rotors in metal-organic frameworks.
Javier Fajardo Jr. was born and raised in sunny Southern California. Having enjoyed everything SoCal had to offer during his upbringing, he never left. In 2014, he received his B.S. in Chemistry and Physics from UC Riverside, where he performed undergraduate research in the laboratory of Prof. Vincent Lavallo. Javier then went on to pursue his interest in synthetic inorganic chemistry as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow at the Caltech working with Profs. Harry B. Gray and Jonas C. Peters. After earning his Ph.D. in 2020, Javier joined Prof. Miguel García-Garibay’s group at UCLA as a 2021 Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow.