December 2016 – Congratulations to Best group members Shahrina Alam and Stuart Whitehead for receiving their doctorate degrees!
December 2016 – The Best group welcomes Jinchao Lou, a new graduate student, to the lab
September 2016 – The Best group has received funding from the National Institutes of Health for a research project aimed at the labeling and detection of lipid biosynthetic products in cells.
August 2015 – Congratulations to former Best group member Dr. Meng M. Rowland for starting her position as an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg! Dr. Rowland moved there after completing an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein Post-doctoral Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University.
April 2015 – Tanei Ricks in the Best group gave a talk to Savannah River Scholars at Georgia Regents University. Read More
January 2015 – The Best group welcomes first year graduate student Alexa Marlow and Xiaoyu Zhang.
December 2014 – Congratulations to Best group member Andrew Bayer for receiving his doctorate degree! Dr. Bayer has moved on to a research position at Avanti Polar Lipids, Inc.
April 2014 – Congratulations to Best group members who received awards at the Department’s Honor’s Day. Shahrina Alam was awarded the Jerome Eastham Fellowship in Organic Chemistry, Sam Mattern-Schain received an award for Outstanding Second Year Candidacy Defense, and Adam Carr received an Outstanding Teaching Award.
January 2014 – The Best group welcomes three first year graduate students, Adam Carr, Alex Fisch and Zhengsu Yu.
April 2013 – Congratulations to Best group members who received awards at the Department’s Honor’s Day. Graduate student Tanei Ricks received an Outstanding Teaching Award, undergraduate student Alana Stein received the C.W. Keenan Outstanding General Chemistry Student Award, and Dr. Best was the recipient of a Paul and Wilma Ziegler Professorship.
August 2012 – Congratulations to Best group members Heidi Bostic and Yilin Wang for receiving their degrees!
April 2012 – Dr. Best has been featured in QUEST magazine. Read More…
August 2011- Dr. Best has joined the Editorial Advisory Board for the journal Chemistry and Physics of Lipids. Read more…
July 2011 – Dr. Best has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure.
May 2011 – Congratulations to Best group members Chi-Linh Do-Thanh and Meng Rowland for receiving their doctorate degrees!
August 2010 – Dr. Best gave an invited presentation at the “Young Investigator’s Symposium” at the American Chemical Society Meeting in Boston, which featured speakers who were nominated and selected from throughout the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry.
June 2010 – Dr. Best is selected as the Scholar of the Week at UT. Read more…
May 2010 – Dr. Best receives a prestigious CAREER award from the National Science Foundation. The award includes a 5-year $580,000 grant to fund research in the Best group. Read more…
May 2010 – Dr. Best’s perspective article on click chemistry in the journal Biochemistry is the most downloaded article from that journal during the last year.
April 2010 – Meng Rowland in the Best group receives the D.A. Shirley Graduate Award in Organic Chemistry as well as the Eugene John Barber Fellowship in Chemistry at the Department’s annual Honors Day awards ceremony.
2009-2010 Academic Year – Dr. Best has given 15 invited seminars at other institutions this academic year, including recent talks at The Scripps Research Institute, The University of Texas at Austin, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Emory, Boston College and Tufts.
March 2010 – Dr. Best and graduate students Chi-Linh Do-Thanh, Meng Rowland and Heidi Bostic attended the ACS National Meeting in San Francisco to present their research.
August 2009 – The Best and Baker groups are the recipients of a joint grant from the National Science Foundation to study cell surface binding events.
January 2009 – The Best group is pleased to be the recipient of funding from the Joint Directed Research and Development Program awarded by Science Alliance. More information on the Science Alliance Program can be found here: Link
April 2007 – Several Best Group members were honored at the Department’s annual Honors Day Awards ceremony. Recipients included Matt Smith (D.A. Shirley Graduate Award in Organic Chemistry, Outstanding Service Award), Manpreet Cheema (First Year Achievement Award), Chinenye Usoh (Undergraduate Award in Physical Chemistry, D.A. Shirley Award in Organic Chemistry), and Tim Wesley (Judson Hall Robertson Memorial Award in Analytical Chemistry).
April 2007 – Justin Reno is a recipient of a prestigious 2007 Pfizer Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship.
March 2007 – Matthew Smith has been awarded a summer graduate student fellowship sponsored by the University.
February 2007 – Matt Smith successfully defended his original research proposal, making him an official doctoral candidate.
The group celebrates Matt’s successful defense of his original research proposal
April 2006 – Chi-Linh Do-Thanh, a graduate student in the group, was awarded a First Year Achievement Award at the department’s Honors Day Award Ceremony.
April 2006 – Justin Reno, an undergraduate in the group, was awarded the C.A. Buehler Chemistry Scholarship, given to an outstanding chemistry student, and the D.A. Shirley Award in Organic Chemistry at the department’s Honors Day Awards Ceremony.
April 2006 – Amy Pollard and Justin Reno, two students performing research in the group, have been awarded summer undergraduate research fellowships funded by the Chancellor’s Office.
March 2006 – Leah Cuthriell from Huntingdon College has been awarded a UT undergraduate research fellowship to be undertaken in the Best group.