The Gilhula Group seeks to ‘use the whole atom’ (that is, both electrons and the nuclei they orbit) to address important challenges in nuclear medicine, sustainable catalysis, and greenhouse gas emission. Currently, we are designing ‘self-healing’ radiolysis-resistant chelators for alpha-emitting radiotherapeutics and discovering unique reactivity in tricoordinate plumbate(II) anions as synthetically useful reagents or catalytic species. Student researchers will receive multidisciplinary training in molecular synthesis and spectroscopic characterization, as well as nuclear and radiochemistry.

• PhD in Chemistry, 2021, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
• BS in Chemistry, 2016, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

• Gilhula, J. C.; Xu, L.; White, F. D.; Adelman, S. L.; Aldrich, K. E.; Batista, E. R.; Dan, D.; Jones, Z. R.; Kozimor, S. A.; Mason, H. E.; Meyer, R. L.; Thiele, N. A.; Yang, P.; Yuan, M. Advances in Heavy Alkaline Earth Chemistry Provide Insight into Complexation of Weakly Polarizing Ra2+, Ba2+, and Sr2+ cations. Sci. Adv. 2024, 10, eadj8765.
• Gilhula, J. C.; Radosevich, A. T. Tetragonal Phosphorus(V) Cations as Tunable and Robust Catalytic Lewis Acids. Chem. Sci. 2019, 10, 7177–7182.
• Gilhula, J. C.; Patterson, J. T.; Williams, N. J.; Itani, R.; Taylor-Pashow, K. M. L.; Abney, C. W. Peroxide-Treated Metal-Organic Framework Templated Adsorbents for Remediation of High Level Nuclear Waste. J. Hazard. Mater. 2019, 365, 306–311.