Alayna Johnson Email & Phone Number

Cambridge, Ma, Us

Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

• Implement OSHA-compliant safety standards for 25 laboratory personnel, resulting in a 50% decrease in safety incidents over one academic year. • Lead a small team of safety officers in conducting weekly inspections of laboratory facilities to ensure proper storage, labeling, and disposal of chemicals.• Enforce chemical waste management practices in accordance with state, and federal regulations.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

• Demonstrate that silicon-oxygen bonds can be utilized to enable degradability in otherwise recalcitrant plastics such as polyethylene and polyurethane.• Design a recycling strategy that allows polymers to undergo more than 3 chemical reprocessing cycles without deterioration of mechanical properties. • Partner with industry experts at BASF and ExxonMobil to design degradable foams and turbine blades. • Communicate scientific advancements by authoring a patent and nine peer-reviewed publications.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

• Managed a team of seven teaching assistants and a cohort of approximately 150 undergraduate organic chemistry students each semester. • Produced course materials including recitation worksheets, practice exams, and lecture summaries.• Facilitated biweekly problem-solving and discussion sessions with approximately 25 students.• Earned an average rating of 6.5 (out of 7.0) from students on subject evaluation reports.

Urbana, Illinois, United States

• Collaborated with a team of students across to two universities to identify a novel cleavage mechanism termed “CATCH”, which facilitates polymer degradation in less than 20 minutes at room temperature.• Established that polyurethane networks containing cleavable acetal groups can undergo CATCH degradation when treated with mild organic acids.• Upcycled polyurethane degradation products into high-value adhesives and photochromic coatings.

West Point, Pa

• Developed potent, safe, and non-addictive compounds for pain management.• Synthesized 23 viable small-molecule analogs for submission to various biological assays. • Screened catalyst and solvent conditions for a photoredox cross-electrophile library.• Conveyed results to company stakeholders through weekly team meetings and a final research report.

Evanston, Illinois

• Synthesized recyclable silicone vitrimers using reversible cross-link chemistry.• Analyzed tensile strength using dynamic mechanical analysis to identify a source of mechanical weakness.• Utilized sustainable filler materials to increase vitrimer strength by more than 200%.

Urbana, Illinois, United States

• Undertook a project to understand how a catalyst’s chemical composition and hydrophobicity affect its affinity for epoxidation reactions.• Constructed a new kinetic model to quantitatively describe rates of olefin epoxidation.• Using gas chromatography, found that hydrophilic catalysts yield epoxidation rates up to 100 times faster than hydrophobic catalysts.

Minneapolis, Mn

• Aimed to determine the most probable mechanism of 1,3-sigmatropic shifts in allyl azides.• Discovered that a concerted mechanism has the most feasible reaction barrier using Gaussian software.• Demonstrated that shifts in branched allyl azides, previously thought to be unfeasible, are possible but unstable.

Doctor Of Philosophy - Phd, Chemistry, 5.0/5.0

Bachelor’S Degree, Chemistry, 3.98/4.0