Full Professor
Vy Dong was born in Big Spring, Texas and grew up in Anaheim, California. She graduated magna cum laude from UC Irvine where she majored in chemistry and completed an honor’s project with Larry Overman. After graduation, she joined David MacMillan’s group at UC Berkeley, and then moved with his group to Caltech to complete her doctoral studies. Her Ph.D. thesis featured variants of the zwitterionic-Claisen rearrangement and a total synthesis of erythronolide B. As an NIH postdoctoral fellow, Vy pursued training in organometallic and supramolecular chemistry with Robert Bergman and Kenneth Raymond at Berkeley. She began her independent academic career at the University of Toronto, where she was promoted with tenure and named the Adrian Brook Professor. After six years in Canada, Vy returned to the United States to assume a professorship at her alma mater, UC Irvine. Professor Dong’s research team is interested in new reaction methods, enantioselective catalysis, and natural product synthesis. She’s currently an associate editor with Chemical Sciences and the faculty advisor for Iota Sigma Pi, a women in chemistry society.