Mitch Anstey
I was born just outside Buffalo, NY but moved to southeastern Virginia at age 5 where I stayed until my undergraduate years at the University of Virginia. I obtained a B.Sc. in Chemistry and worked with Prof. Dean Harman on strongly π-donating transition metal complexes that disrupt the aromaticity of aromatic molecules and activate them toward new substitution and functionalization reactions.
If you were driving anywhere in the USA during the summer of 2004, you likely spotted me on a road trip to my new home in Berkeley, CA. I joined the research group of Prof. Bob Bergman at UC Berkeley to investigate metal insertion into C-H bonds. In 2009, I earned my Ph.D. in Chemistry, and pretty much gave a high five to everyone in a 5-mile radius!
That summer, I took a postdoctoral position at the Livermore, CA campus of Sandia National Laboratories to work on energy storage projects. A year later, I was hired as a staff scientist and promoted to Principal Member of the Technical Staff a few years later. I’m very proud of this phase of my career, as it allowed me to mentor younger scientists and continue to form my own ideas about how chemistry could benefit battery science.
But after realizing how much I loved the mentorship aspect, I knew I needed to make a career change that would let me focus on mentorship. I interviewed for academic positions in chemistry, and I was lucky enough to be hired by Davidson College as a professor! Now I get to focus on the things I love most: students and science!
I can be contacted directly at mitch.anstey[@]davidson.edu, and you can follow me on Twitter at @theyneedacrane and BlueSky @inorgeek.bksy.social.
Current Group Members
Violeta Corso-Castillo (’28)
Allison Dixon (’28)
Ben Grear (’26)
Binh Nguyen (’27)
Ella Nolen (’26)
Tylar Pastre (’28)
Maya Vermeer (’26)
Jennifer Vo (’27)
Former Group Members
Tashroom Ahsan (NCSSM, ’20) – undergraduate at Deep Springs College, Yale University
Corey Angle (Livingstone College, ’21)
Laura Lillian Baggett (’26)
David Choi (’21)
Cole Cuthbertson (’18)
Kaycee Gass (’17) – University of Tennessee, Knoxville; graduate student in Materials Science
Jennie Goodell (’19)
Alexa Greenwood Dameron (’22) – Wake Forest Medical School
Claudia Hernandez Brito (’20)
Allison Hunt (’18)
Lucas Kane (’18) – United States Secret Service
Nick Kennedy (’19)
Hannah Mallard (’21)
Andy Nguyen (’25) – University of Pennsylvania, graduate student in Chemistry
Jay Nicoleau (’21)
Nathan Rudman (’18) – University of Pennsylvania, graduate student in Chemistry
Alex Strasser (’20) – RA Capital Management, Junior Healthcare Associate
David Thole (’21)
Kamryn Walker (’24) – Howard University, graduate student in Chemistry
Ellen Warner (’20) – NC State, graduate student in Chemistry
Ais Whalen (’22) – Yale University, graduate student in Chemical Engineering
