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William Dichtel (born 1978, Houston, Texas) is the Robert L. Letsinger Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University and a 2015 MacArthur Fellow who has helped pioneer the development of porous polymers known as covalent organic frameworks. Dichtel was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018. In 2020, Dichtel was selected as the 2020 Laureate in Chemistry of the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists. He also founded Cylopure, a university spin-off that seeks to bring to market water filtration with cyclodextrin polymers.

Professor Ditchel is an accomplished open water swimmer. He completed the Chicago Sky Line Swim in 2022 as well as successfully crossing the English Channel on June 25, 2024 in 12 hours, 8 minutes.

Early life and education

Dichtel was born in 1978 in Houston, Texas. He was raised in Roanoke, Virginia. Dichtel earned his B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000, where he worked in the laboratory of Prof. Timothy M. Swager. He then moved to the University of California at Berkeley to perform graduate studies in the laboratory of Prof. Jean M. J. Fréchet. In Fréchet's lab, Dichtel synthesized porphyrin-containing dendrimers for light harvesting applications. He then moved to Los Angeles to perform joint postdoctoral research between 2005 and 2008 with Prof. Fraser Stoddart at UCLA, and Prof. James R. Heath at Caltech, where he studied rotaxanes.

Independent career

Dichtel began his independent career at Cornell University in 2008, as an assistant professor in the department of chemistry and chemical biology. He was promoted to associate professor in 2014. Dichtel moved to Northwestern University in 2016, where he holds the post of Robert L. Letsinger Professor of Chemistry.

References

1. "William Dichtel". Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation. Retrieved March 9, 2017.
2. "William Dichtel". Dichtel Research Profile. Northwestern University.
3. "Dichtel Research Group | At the Interface of Organic and Materials Chemistry". Northwestern University.
4. ^ "William Dichtel — MacArthur Foundation". MacArthur Foundation. Retrieved September 29, 2015.
5. "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Will Dichtel". Retrieved May 23, 2021.
6. "Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists Announce 2020 Laureates". Blavatnik Family Foundation. Retrieved July 22, 2020.
7. Bomgardner, Melody M. (February 22, 2019). "CycloPure raises $5 million for cyclodextrin water filtration products". cen.acs.org. Retrieved May 30, 2021.
8. ^ "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Will Dichtel". Retrieved May 23, 2021.
9. ^ "William Dichtel – Dichtel Research Group". sites.northwestern.edu. Retrieved May 23, 2021.
10. Dichtel, William R.; Serin, Jason M.; Edder, Carine; Fréchet, Jean M. J.; Matuszewski, Michael; Tan, Loon-Seng; Ohulchanskyy, Tymish Y.; Prasad, Paras N. (2004). "Singlet Oxygen Generation via Two-Photon Excited FRET". Journal of the American Chemical Society. 126 (17): 5380–5381. doi:10.1021/ja031647x. ISSN 0002-7863. PMID 15113208.
11. Dichtel, William R.; Hecht, Stefan; Fréchet, Jean M. J. (2005). "Functionally Layered Dendrimers: A New Building Block and Its Application to the Synthesis of Multichromophoric Light-Harvesting Systems". Organic Letters. 7 (20): 4451–4454. doi:10.1021/ol0516824. ISSN 1523-7060. PMID 16178556.
12. Dichtel, William R.; Baek, Kyung-Youl; Fréchet, Jean M. J.; Rietveld, Ivo B.; Vinogradov, Sergei A. (2006). "Amphiphilic diblock star polymer catalysts via atom transfer radical polymerization". Journal of Polymer Science Part A: Polymer Chemistry. 44 (17): 4939–4951. Bibcode:2006JPoSA..44.4939D. doi:10.1002/pola.21610. ISSN 1099-0518.
13. Dichtel, William R.; Miljanić, Ognjen Š.; Spruell, Jason M.; Heath, James R.; Stoddart, J. Fraser (August 1, 2006). "Efficient Templated Synthesis of Donor−Acceptor Rotaxanes Using Click Chemistry". Journal of the American Chemical Society. 128 (32): 10388–10390. doi:10.1021/ja063127i. ISSN 0002-7863. PMID 16895403.
14. Dichtel, William R; Heath, James R; Fraser Stoddart, J (June 15, 2007). "Designing bistable [2]rotaxanes for molecular electronic devices". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 365 (1855): 1607–1625. Bibcode:2007RSPTA.365.1607D. doi:10.1098/rsta.2007.2034. PMID 17430812. S2CID 2278747.

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