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1. Cluster Preface: Electrochemical Synthesis and Catalysis

   https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0039-1689970  

   Kawamata, Yu; Baran, Phil S. (May 2019, Synlett)

   null (Ed.)

   Yu Kawamata was born in Japan in 1988, and he completed his undergraduate education at Kyoto University. He obtained his master’s degree and his Ph.D. at the same university under the supervision of Professor Keiji Maruoka, and he undertook a short-term internship at The Scripps Research Institute working on natural product synthesis with Professor Phil S. Baran. Upon completion of his doctoral studies, he returned to the Baran laboratory as a research associate and currently is pursuing his postdoctoral studies on organic electrochemistry.Phil S. Baran was born in New Jersey in 1977 and completed his undergraduate education at New York University in 1997. After earning his Ph.D. at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in 2001, he pursued postdoctoral studies at Harvard University until 2003, at which point he returned to TSRI to begin his independent career. He was promoted to the rank of professor in 2008 and is currently the Darlene Shiley Professor of Chemistry. The mission of his laboratory is to educate students at the intersection of fundamental organic chemistry and translational science. 

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2. Robert Kent Trench (1940—2021): A life devoted to symbiotic mutalisms and seeking nature’s truth.

   LaJeunesse, T; Banaszak, A; Fisher, C; Shick, J; Warner, M; Porter, J; Kuris, A; Iglesias-Prieto, R; Fitt, W (October 2021, Symbiosis)

   “It ain’t necessarily so” – A favored mantra recited by R. K. Trench in the context of “received truth,” or established beliefs; and the title of his unfinished autobiography. Professor Robert (Bob) Kent Trench’s research career brought together multiple disciplines in the study of mutualistic symbioses that are crucial to understanding the physiology, ecology, and co-evolution of metazoan and protist associations, many of which are beneficial to the Earth’s biosphere. Through the development and use of complementary techniques, he pioneered important discoveries about metabolically coupled interactions between “plants” and animals. Having grown up in Belize (formerly British Honduras), his journey in academia started at the University College of the West Indies (UCWI) on the island nation of Jamaica, then proceeded to the University of California, Los Angeles (USA); Oxford University (UK); and Yale University (Connecticut, USA). He was a longtime faculty member in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (Figs. 1a–f). Over the course of his life (August 3 1940–April 27 2021), he recognized that many things presented as fact were often accumulated dogma. His direct application of the scientific method ultimately helped to change these misconceptions. By deconstructing established ‘beliefs,’ he greatly improved our understanding of several mutualistic symbioses, and many of his insights and hypotheses published decades ago remain at the forefront of intense investigation to this day. 

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3. Functional Geometry and the "Traité de Lutherie"

   https://doi.org/10.1145/2500365.2500617  

   Mairson, Harry (October 2015, Journal of the Violin Society of America)

   Harry Mairson, a computer science professor at Brandeis University, devised a computer lan- guage to draw violins, following the methods of construction used by François Denis in his book “Traité de Lutherie.” In this very engaging talk, Harry presents what he did and the reasoning be- hind it. Interested persons are encouraged to con- tact him, and to get and experiment with his code 

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4. Assembling Complex Macromolecules and Self-Organizations of Biological Relevance with Cu(I)-Catalyzed Azide-Alkyne, Thio-Bromo, and TERMINI Double “Click” Reactions

   https://doi.org/10.3390/polym15051075  

   Moreno, Adrian; Lligadas, Gerard; Adamson, Jasper; Maurya, Devendra S.; Percec, Virgil (March 2023, Polymers)

   In 2022, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Bertozzi, Meldal, and Sharpless “for the development of click chemistry and biorthogonal chemistry”. Since 2001, when the concept of click chemistry was advanced by Sharpless laboratory, synthetic chemists started to envision click reactions as the preferred choice of synthetic methodology employed to create new functions. This brief perspective will summarize research performed in our laboratories with the classic Cu(I)-catalyzed azide-alkyne click (CuAAC) reaction elaborated by Meldal and Sharpless, with the thio-bromo click (TBC) and with the less-used, irreversible TERminator Multifunctional INItiator (TERMINI) dual click (TBC) reactions, the last two elaborated in our laboratory. These click reactions will be used to assemble, by accelerated modular-orthogonal methodologies, complex macromolecules and self-organizations of biological relevance. Self-assembling amphiphilic Janus dendrimers and Janus glycodendrimers together with their biological membrane mimics known as dendrimersomes and glycodendrimersomes as well as simple methodologies to assemble macromolecules with perfect and complex architecture such as dendrimers from commercial monomers and building blocks will be discussed. This perspective is dedicated to the 75th anniversary of Professor Bogdan C. Simionescu, the son of my (VP) Ph.D. mentor, Professor Cristofor I. Simionescu, who as his father, took both science and science administration in his hands, and dedicated his life to handling them in a tandem way, to their best. 

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5. Philipp Strack, 2024 Clark Medalist

   https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.20241422  

   Fudenberg, Drew (February 2025, Journal of Economic Perspectives)

   The 2024 John Bates Clark Medal of the American Economic Association was awarded to Philipp Strack, Professor of Economics at Yale University, for his pathbreaking contributions to the study of individual decision making, which have introduced new techniques, improved our understanding of important economic phenomena, and helped spark a new wave of research on the economics of information while building bridges between modern economic theory and a wide range of adjacent disciplines. This article summarizes some of Philipp’s papers, and explains how they build on and improve previous work. 

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