Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 21/09/2026Applications to the UChicago PhD program are open! chemistry.uchicago.edu/graduate-pro... Please check out the information sessions too - anyone who *registers* *and* *attends* an info session will get a fee waiver code sent to them after the session! 0104
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 02/09/2026Sorry, but this part doesn't pass the sniff test - if this were true, they wouldn't be building the data centers! 270
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 19/08/2026What is the heterocyclic variant of carbonyl olefination? Today we report isoxazole-to-pyrrole O-to-C replacement - check out the full story here: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 0185
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 12/08/2026The Anthropic logo looks exactly like Kurt Vonnegut's drawing from Breakfast of Champions 000
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 04/08/2026This well-meaning article falls into a familiar trap - after detailing how AI is failing on scale in her role as CIO, the author credulously asserts thats it does work for drug discovery. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/o... Reminds me of this: inpreparation.substack.com/p/scientists... 280
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 30/06/2026lmao, just what we need - ten 100-page reviews written without human involvement, great idea folks 4142
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 29/06/2026I am tickled by this ACS email as someone whose most common registration approach in previous ACS's was to forget to register until I try to pick up my badge and then register on-site. lol @ "gentle reminder" and "we understand" Guess most speakers "forgot"? 590
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 03/06/2026I am particularly proud of this classification scheme, which I hope will become a blueprint for the field as people continue to go after these important C-to-N replacement reactions! 091
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 13/01/2026Today on @chemrxiv.org, we disclose a C-to-N replacement that actually works complex natural products - a pipe-dream when we started. The secret is to lean in to the triplet nitrene. Congrats Dong Il, and thanks to the whole team, including collaborators from Sanofi! chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr... 1325
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 30/12/2025Just in time for the new year - we show that you can make either isomer of N-aryl pyrazole selectively from a single TDSO. We really believe in the power of these wacky heterocycles. chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr... Excellent work by superstar Alex Fanourakis, in collab with Osvaldo Gutierrez and J&J 1273
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 07/12/2025Every morning while making coffee www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi... 080
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 21/10/2025A true pleasure to host Koji Kubota @uchichemistry.bsky.social for a stop on his Merck Banyu Lectureship Award Tour! 0111
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 21/10/2025New @chemrxiv.org, a collaboration with @honggen-wang.bsky.social and group alum, now asst prof. Myojeong Kim: the first true catalytic interception of isodiazene-generated primary-amine-derived radicals. The key is an N-F reagent that enables productive chain carrying! doi.org/10.26434/che... 1134
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 18/09/2025🚨FEE WAIVERS!🚨 Sign up for our info sessions on Nov. 4 and Nov. 11th - anyone who registers and attends will get an application fee waiver! chemistry.uchicago.edu/graduate-pro... 084
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 18/08/2025If you're at ACS this Wednesday, come by my talk at 2:05 PM in the East Salon A, part of the joint ORGN/AGRO symposium on accelerating discovery and development! 061
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 09/08/2025It still can't electron push - here are some of it's attempts at peracid epoxidation. The text description of the mechanism is not bad, but not perfect. Seems unable to connect that to images 2154
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 08/08/2025Here is what happens with more prodding to use the (mostly correct) text description of the mechanism to "design it explicitly in chemical drawing software logic" Second image is after it asked me if I wanted it to "refine further" 130
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 08/08/2025lol @ PhD's in my pocket - still can't electron push 🤷♂️ 4224
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 18/07/2025Today in @science.org, @mikusp.bsky.social reports a method to replace the C2 of pyridines with N, affording pyridazines. The change from electronically consonant (pyridine) to dissonant (pyridazine) opens retrosyntheses not typically available to the latter. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 34110
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 28/05/2025Fans of Guenther Schlonk will enjoy the "cross-decoupling" easter egg: jabde.com/wp-content/u... 3123
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 14/04/2025M. Gessen hits the nail on the head, yet again www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/o... 114146
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 03/04/2025You'll soon be able to purchase the key aminating reagent - watch this space! 050
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 03/04/2025If you're interested in a break from the doom-and-gloom, may I recommend our article, online today @nature.com A solution to the pyrazole alkylation problem, leveraging S-to-NR atom replacement. Skeletal editing has strategic value, outside of late-stage! www.nature.com/articles/s41... 713626
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 18/03/2025It's finally in the Federal Register! 2 months late is better than never! 0182
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 23/02/2025This is supposed to be a visual proof of the Pythagorean theorem (you spin and it drains into the other squares), but @msichicago.bsky.social can't seem to get the fill level right - two photos, ~1 year apart 070
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 10/02/2025This passage from Derek captures the insanity of these past few weeks so much better than I could ever articulate 1211
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 18/11/2024Alexandra Petri has been putting a brilliant voice to my frustrations these past few weeks. Her column is (maybe unfortunately) a must-read these days. 060
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 12/11/2024Now online as an accepted article, a novel hypervalent iodine reagent that functions as a source of electrophilic "N". My first student, Patrick Kelly's swan song (now a postdoc with the Stahl lab), done in collaboration with scientists at GSK. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... 2547
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 23/10/2023I have gotten in the habit of sending something like this to my coauthors everytime we submit - the last mile stuff (final experiments, waiting for reviews, revisions) can be such a slog that it's easy to forget to celebrate. 111
Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 28/09/2023The problem I started my lab to work on. Not the end of the story, but a huge first step from @tylerpearson.bsky.social Replace an aromatic carbon atom with no perturbation of the rest of the skeleton - if you put the azide in with C-H functionalization, you can scan positions on a parent arene. 0132