River Samet (G2)

Email: river5159@g.ucla.edu ​​

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River Samet was born and raised in Marin County, California. He obtained his B.S. in Chemistry‬ from UCSB in 2023. He participated in undergraduate research in a number of different settings:‬ first under Dr. Eric McFarland in the Chemical Engineering Department at UCSB, then at‬ Reaction35, a Santa-Barbara based company specializing in conversion of organic waste into‬ usable feedstock for chemical processes, followed by Dr. Liming Zhang’s synthetic organic‬ chemistry research lab at UCSB, and finally with Dr. Donald Aue, Professor Emeritus of UCSB,‬ under whom he computationally investigated nonstatistical reaction dynamics of a number of‬ small molecule organic species.‬ River is now a purely-computational graduate student jointly advised by Dr. Osvaldo Gutierrez‬ and Dr. Ken Houk at UCLA, working on a number of projects related to reaction dynamics in‬ organic chemistry, dynamic processes within proteins, transition metal-catalyzed‬ rearrangements, solvent effects, and, more recently, machine learning-guided analysis and‬ prediction of organic reactions.‬ In his free time, River mainly enjoys making electronic-dance music (EDM), going to the gym,‬ managing investments, and spending time with friends and family.‬

 

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." - Unknown