 9 UC Berkeley faculty members have been awarded this year's Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowships, making UC Berkeley the university to receive the highest number of fellowships. The awards are granted to help young scientists and scholars fulfill their endeavors early in their respective academic fields. We sat down with Dr. Thomas Mamoni, one of the recipients to find out more about his research experience in the synthesis of natural compounds. So our lab is involved in synthetic organic chem. That involves usually two main areas, methods development where one creates new reactions and target oriented synthesis where you develop a route to a complex predefined structure. So my Sloan award was for the latter case. So most of our group is currently working on developing synthesis of complex natural products. Having done his undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley and his doctoral studies at the Secrets Research Institute, Dr. Mamoni had the opportunity to work in many chemistry labs. Before returning to UC Berkeley to continue his research and teaching, he pursued postdoctoral studies at MIT where he works in the area of palladium catalyzed carbon oxygen and carbon fluoride bond formation. So synthetic chemistry I think is one of kind of a unique area of science in that you are a classic scientist making observations, formulating hypotheses. But you're also there's creative or artistic side to it much like architecture, art or music. So you can basically synthesize whatever you can think of. So I think natural products are certainly powerful inspirations but synthetic chemistry has the unique ability to tune the structure in any way conceivable. That's pretty unique right now to synthesis. Dr. Mamoni hopes that his research will be used in medicine, particularly in the field of cancer research in antibiotics. I think our goals, our future goals are two-fold. So one we're interested in advancing the field of synthesis in general, more in academic pursuit to be able to synthesize something using less chemicals, less steps, generating less waste. The other kind of benefit is that you can make something therapeutically relevant. An antibiotic, for example, an anti-cancer agent. Currently Dr. Mamoni can be found doing extraction synthesis on the 8th floor of Vladimir Hall. My favorite molecule is probably the molecule four-ball. It's found in the plant family euphorobiasae. It's a potent activator of protein kinase and also has an incredibly beautiful structure. Reporting for CalTV News, my name is Carlo David.