Dr. Mayuko Isomura

Biography

Professor Mayuko Isomura, born in Tokyo, Japan, graduated with B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemistry from the University of Tokyo, where she conducted research in the laboratory of Professor Eiichi Nakamura. She earned her Ph.D. at ETH Zürich in 2020 under the direction of Professor Erick M. Carreira. During her doctoral studies, she joined the research group of Professor Eric N. Jacobsen at Harvard University as a postdoctoral fellow. In 2025, Professor Isomura began her independent career as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research focuses on synthetic organic chemistry and the development of novel catalytic reactions to address fundamental challenges in chemical reactivity and enantioselectivity. She aims to expand the capabilities of organic synthesis by designing enantioselective catalytic methods that provide efficient access to valuable molecular architectures, particularly nitrogen-containing compounds. She is also deeply interested in elucidating reaction mechanisms and incorporates tools from physical organic chemistry and computational chemistry, including density functional theory, to understand and refine transformations. Her long-term vision is to establish broadly applicable and conceptually innovative strategies to overcome long-standing limitations in synthesis and open new avenues for molecular construction.

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