Judy I. Wu earned her BS in Chemistry from Tunghai University, Taiwan, and her PhD in Chemistry under the mentorship of Paul Schleyer at the University of Georgia. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Houston, where she leads a research team exploring the concept of aromaticity and its modern applications in reaction design, organic electronics, and energy storage solutions. Wu is recognized for her contributions to aromaticity-modulated hydrogen bonding, excited-state proton and electron transfer reactions, and chemical transformations driven by antiaromaticity relief. She is the recipient of honors such as the Solvay IUPAC Young Chemist Award and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship. As a computational chemist by training and an organic chemist at heart, her work bridges theory and experiment to advance the understanding of molecular reactivity and design.
Igor V. Alabugin received his B.Sc. in Chemistry and Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Moscow State University, followed by postdoctoral training at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is currently a Distinguished Research Professor at Florida State University. His research interests focus on uncovering new connections between molecular structure and chemical reactivity. By combining experimental and computational tools, the group develops novel reactions and designs structurally complex molecules with unusual properties. Projects in his group span synthesis and catalysis, computational chemistry, photochemistry and spectroscopy, nanoscience, and applications in environment and energy. Alabugin is known for his development of stereoelectronic concepts, expansion of the rules governing the formation of cyclic molecules, creative design of new alkyne reactions, and mechanistic studies of radical, photochemical, and photoredox processes. His current projects explore the hidden reactivity of alkynes for constructing carbon-rich materials, a conceptually new “three-electron” approach to C–N bond formation via mild C–H activation, new synthetic routes to carbo- and heterocycles via aborted pericyclic reactions, the expansion of electron upconversion strategies, and the application of stereoelectronic principles across diverse areas of chemistry.
