Stanna Dorn

BS Chemistry, Hope College, 2017
BA Music, Hope College, 2017
PhD, Indiana University , 2022
skdorn [at] caltech.edu

Stanna was born and raised in the middle of the woods in northern Michigan—with minimal cell service and no high-speed internet access! Unable to choose just one major for undergraduate study, she chose two—chemistry and music—and received a BS and BA in those fields from Hope College. Initially doing analytical chemistry research on tattoo inks while at Hope, she quickly pivoted and fell in love with organic chemistry research, working with Prof. Jeffrey B. Johnson on a Rh-catalyzed interconversion of quinolinyl ketones. Additionally, as an undergraduate she spent a summer in Prof. John Montgomery’s group at the University of Michigan, where she synthesized non-native substrates for subsequent testing in enzymatic oxidation. For her PhD studies, she pursued work in Prof. Kevin Brown’s lab at Indiana University-Bloomington, where she developed cooperative catalysis methods for alkene carboboration (particularly with Cu/Pd). After receiving her PhD, Stanna decided to venture out of the Midwest to California and gain synthetic experience in the Reisman lab at Caltech. Outside of the lab, Stanna enjoys making music, playing volleyball, learning new languages, and proving that getting C’s in organic as an undergraduate does not define one’s future success in the field.
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