Dave Nicewicz
William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor
CB#3290, Department of Chemistry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3290, USA
nicewicz@unc.edu
+1 919 843 9150
Director of Chemistry Graduate Studies (2015-2021)
Co-Founder, LED Radiofluidics
Synlett Associate Editor
What I’m eating, imbibing or city I’m in now
Education
Dave completed his Bachelor’s (2000) and Master’s (2001) degrees in Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte with Professor Craig A. Ogle. He then moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he completed his Ph.D. in 2006 with Professor Jeffrey S. Johnson. His graduate research focused on novel Brook Rearrangement transformations and completed the total synthesis of Zaragozic Acid C. Following his graduate education, Nicewicz was a Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratories of the 2021 Chemistry Nobel Laureate, Professor David W. C. MacMillan. It was during this time that Nicewicz pioneered the use of ruthenium photoredox catalysis in combination with chiral amine organocatalysis to develop a general method for enantioselective aldehyde alkylation and more importantly, establishing photoredox catalysis as an emerging tool in organic synthesis.
In 2009, Dave started as an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2015, full Professor in 2018 and was named the first Royce Murray Term Professor of Chemistry at UNC Chapel Hill in 2020.
Honors
ACS Cope Scholar Award (2022)
Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists, Finalist (2019)
The Hirata Award, Nagoya University, Japan (2017)
Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry, Japan Lectureship Award (2016)
Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2015)
Ruth Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement – UNC (2015)
Eli Lilly Grantee Award (2015)
NSF CAREER Award (2014-2019)
Amgen Young Investigator Award (2014)
Boehringer Ingelheim New Investigator Award in Organic Chemistry (2013)
Junior Faculty Development Award – UNC (2013)
Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering (2012)
Thieme Chemistry Journal Award (2012)
James Moeser Award for Distinguished Research - UNC (2011)
Eli Lilly New Faculty Award (2009)