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Garg Lab

About Neil

 
 
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Neil K. Garg, Ph.D.

Distinguished Kenneth N. Trueblood Professor & Vice Chair
B.S., New York University (2000)
Ph.D., Caltech (2005)
NIH postdoctoral fellow, UC Irvine (2005–2007)

Curriculum Vitae

Watch Neil’s TEDx talk

Email: neilgarg@chem.ucla.edu
Office: (310) 825-1536
5505C Molecular Sciences Building

 

Neil is a Distinguished Professor and the inaugural holder of the Kenneth N. Trueblood Endowed Chair in Chemistry and Biochemistry. He has served as Vice Chair for the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (2012–2016 and 2023-present), as well as the Department Chair (2019–2023). He also served as Faculty-in-Residence in the UCLA undergraduate community for nine years. Neil is a co-founder of ElectraTect as well as a popular speaker and consultant for teaching, scientific, policy, government, and legal matters.

Prior to joining the faculty at UCLA, Neil received a B.S. in Chemistry from New York University where he did undergraduate research with Professor Marc Walters. During his undergraduate years, he spent several months in Strasbourg, France while conducting research with Professor Mir Wais Hosseini at Université Louis Pasteur as a NSF REU Fellow. Neil obtained his Ph.D. in 2005 from the California Institute of Technology under the direction of Professor Brian Stoltz. He then joined Professor Larry Overman’s research laboratory at the University of California, Irvine as an NIH Postdoctoral Scholar.

Neil joined the faculty at UCLA in 2007. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2012, and then to Full Professor in 2013.  In 2020, he was promoted to the rank of Distinguished Professor.

 
 

Honors and Awards

 
 
 
 

 

Lectureships

  • Boekelheide Lectures – University of Oregon, Eugene, IL, 2025.

  • Dreyfus Lectures – Illinois State University, Normal, IL, 2025.

  • Plenary Lecture – National Organic Chemistry Symposium (NOS), Troy, NY, 2025.

  • Larson Lectures – University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN, 2025.

  • Dreyfus Lectures – Trinity University, San Antonio, TX, 2024.

  • Overman Lecture – University of California, Irvine, CA, 2024.

  • Erdtman Lecture – KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, 2024.

  • SinoCompound Lecture – The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, 2024.

  • Herschbach Lectures – Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2022.

  • Mukaiyama Award Lecture – 38th Seminar on Synthetic Organic Chemistry, Kitakyushu, Japan, 2022.

  • Keynote Lecture – Merck Global Chemistry Summit, Skytop, PA, 2022.

  • Keynote Lecture – UCLA Chancellor’s Society, Lake Arrowhead, CA, 2022.

  • Goldstein Distinguished Lecture – Cal Poly Pomona, Pomona, CA, 2021.

  • UCLA Arts 10 Questions – UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 2020.

  • 1960’s Scholars Lecture – Williams College, Williamstown, MA, 2020.

  • Skeptical Chymists Lecture – Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, PA, 2020.

  • Organic Syntheses Lecture – Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 2020.

  • Keynote Lecture – Caltech Project for Effective Teaching, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, 2019.

  • Keynote Lecture – Amgen Young Investigator Award Symposium, Amgen, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2019.

  • Reilly Lectures – University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, 2019.

  • Plenary Lecture – EFMC International Symposium on Advances in Synthetic and Medicinal Chemistry, Athens, Greece, 2019.

  • Keynote Lecture – Robert Foster Cherry Educational Summit, Baylor University, Waco, TX, 2019.

  • Honors College Distinguished Lecture – University of Mary Hardin–Baylor, Belton, TX, 2019.

  • L. Carroll King Memorial Lectures – Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, 2018.

  • Burkett Lectures – DePauw University, Greencastle, IN, 2018.

  • R.C. Fuson Lectures – University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL, 2018.

  • RSC Higher Education Award Lecture – Sir Derek Barton Centenary Symposium, Imperial College, London, UK, 2018.

  • Keynote Lecture – Organic Reactions Catalysis Society Conference, San Diego, CA, 2018.

  • Distinguished Lecture – Modern Chemistry Series, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, 2018.

  • Emerson Lectures – Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 2018. 

  • Dow Foundation Distinguished Lectures – University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, 2017.        

  • Tomlinson Teaching Lectures – McGill University, Montreal, Canada, 2017.

  • Katritzky Lecture – University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 2017.

  • RSC Merck Award Lecture – 23rd Lakeland Symposium on Heterocyclic Chemistry, Grasmere, Ambleside, UK, 2017.

  • Aldrich Lecture – University of Illinois, Chicago, IL, 2017.

  • Genentech Lecture – University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada, 2016.

  • Michael Geis Distinguished Lecture – Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, 2016.

  • Organic Syntheses Lecture – Wayne State University, Ann Arbor, MI, 2016.

  • Keynote Lectures – UC Symposium for the Chemical Sciences, Lake Arrowhead, CA, 2016.

  • Paul Dowd Lectures – University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, 2016.

  • Caltech Project for Effective Teaching Lecture, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, 2015.

  • Keynote Lecture – Tetrahedron Symposium Asia Edition, Shanghai, China, 2015.

  • Novartis Chemistry Lecture – Novartis, Basel, Switzerland, 2015.

  • Keynote Lecture – Agrochemicals: Innovations in Discovery and Process Chemistry Symposium – ACS National Meeting, Boston, MA, 2015.

  • Novartis Chemistry Lecture – Novartis GNF, San Diego, CA, 2015.

  • Novartis Chemistry Lecture – Novartis, Emeryville, CA, 2015.

  • Keynote Lecture – Tetrahedron Symposium, Berlin, Germany, 2015.

  • TEDXUCLA, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 2015.

  • Plenary Lecture – Meeting of the Organic Chemistry Division of the French Chemical Society, Paris, France, 2015.

  • Fagnou Lecture – University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada, 2015.

  • Novartis Chemistry Lecture – Novartis, Cambridge, MA, 2015.

  • Aldrich Lecture – The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 2014.

  • Padwa Lecture – Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 2014.

  • Aldrich Lecture – University of Texas, Austin, TX, 2014.

 

Media

 

Videos