Levi M. Stanley

Levi was born in Bismarck, North Dakota in 1979. He grew up in Washburn, North Dakota and graduated from Washburn High School in 1997. He received his B.A. in Chemistry from Augustana College in Sioux Falls, SD in 2001, where he worked with Professor Gary Earl and Professor Jetty Duffy-Matzner. In 2002, he began his graduate studies with Professor Mukund P. Sibi at North Dakota State University. There he developed enantioselective dipolar cycloaddition reactions and applications of chiral relay ligands and auxiliaries in enantioselective catalysis. He received his Ph.D. in 2007 and moved to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign to begin an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship with Professor John F. Hartwig. At the U of I he developed a variety of enantioselective, iridium-catalyzed allylic substitution reactions. In 2011, he received an NIH Pathways to Independence Award (K99/R00) to develop new strategies to generate artificial metalloenzymes with Professor Huimin Zhao and Professor Hartwig. In January of 2012, he joined the Chemistry Department at Iowa State University as an Assistant Professor.

Email: lstanley@iastate.edu

Dustin Youmans

Dustin was born in Syracuse, NY. He attended Onondaga Community college before transferring to SUNY Buffalo located in Buffalo, NY. Here he received a bachelor’s degree in medicinal chemistry and conducted undergraduate research under Dr. Steven Diver. His research was based in ruthenium, cobalt catalysis and synthesis. He joined the Stanley group in the Fall of 2020.

Email: dyoumans@iastate.edu

Aaron Donovan

Aaron grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from UW-Stevens Point, where he conducted undergraduate research with Dr. Shannon Riha. His research was focused on finding better routes to access photovoltaic materials through solid-state chemistry. After undergrad, he moved back to Green Bay and worked in the R&D division of a firefighting technologies company. There, he designed PFAS-free firefighting foams to replace the PFAS-containing products the industry had relied on for decades. He joined the Stanley group in 2022 and is co-advised by Brett VanVeller. 

Email: adono@iastate.edu

Joseph Thuma

Joseph was born in Woodstock, Il and grew up in Harvard,Il. He attended Dominican University in River Forest, Il. Here he received a bachelor's degree in chemistry and worked with Dr. Daniela Andrei. He joined the Stanley group in the Fall of 2023.

Email: jfthuma@iastate.edu