Alexandra Brown is completing a postdoc at Princeton University with Todd Hyster, focusing on the development of new biocatalytic reactions.
Brown completed her graduate studies in chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Alexandra grew up in Dublin, California and received her undergraduate degree in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 2017.
As an undergraduate, she worked in Professor John Arnold’s group studying titanium-aluminum heterobimetallics supported by bridging hydride ligands.
Her work expanded the classes of reactions these complexes are known to undergo and provided insight into titanium-doped aluminum hydrogen storage materials. This project led to her interest in understanding the often-complicated electronic structure of multimetallic complexes.
Alexandra began her graduate work at MIT in 2017 with Professor Daniel Suess. Her research focused on the reactivity and electronic structure of synthetic metal-chalcogenide clusters, with a particular interest in iron-sulfur clusters. In biological systems, these clusters catalyze synthetically challenging reactions such as the reduction of dinitrogen to ammonia. She is interested in understanding the mechanism of these reactions and in gleaning electronic structure information which may be used to rationally design new catalysts for carrying out these reactions industrially.
In her free time, she enjoys climbing and trying new recipes.
