Faculty/Researcher List

Lyle Isaacs

UMD - Faculty

Research

Processing, Devices

Lyle Isaacs’ background encompasses synthetic organic chemistry, self-assembled monolayers, and self-assembly in homogenous solution. Students in the Isaacs group become experts in synthetic organic chemistry and the associated analytical techniques (e.g. advanced NMR techniques, fluorescence, isothermal titration calorimetry, gel permeation chromatography, etc.) used to characterize aggregates in solution. Current projects undertaken by the Isaacs group include: 1) studies of self-sorting phenomena in organic and aqueous solution with the goal of endowing these ensembles of molecules with abilities that go beyond those of their isolated components, 2) synthesis and recognition properties of cucurbit[n]uril analogs, and 3) the surface functionalization of magnetic nanoparticles and their use as nanoscale probes in biological systems.

Lyle Isaacs was born in New York City, New York where he attended the Bronx High School of Science. After obtaining a B.S. degree from the University of Chicago in 1991 where he worked in the laboratory of Professor William Wulff, he moved west to the University of California, Los Angeles to join the group of Professor Francois Diederich. After a short stint at UCLA (M.S. 1992) he moved with Diederich to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich (ETH). For his doctoral dissertation (Ph.D. 1995) he was awarded the Silver Medallion of the ETH. After an NIH postdoctoral fellowship with Professor George Whitesides at Harvard, he joined the faculty in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Maryland, College Park in 1998 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2004. His research interests are in the area of self-assembly with an emphasis on self-sorting, cucurbit[n]urils, and molecular clips.