Nate Dow

Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2023

Nate was born and raised in the frosty northeast state of New Hampshire before heading to the Mid-Atlantic for college. He completed his undergraduate degree in chemistry at Swarthmore College, working under the supervision of Dr. Bob Paley. Nate’s thesis work in the Paley group centered around the synthesis and characterization of planar chiral iron-diene complexes, which later served as scaffolds for novel diastereoselective transformations. During his summers, he also spent time in the lab of Dr. Christine Caputo at the University of New Hampshire, developing both RAFT-polymerized carbon quantum dot and pillararene species for use in solar-driven photocatalysis. Following his undergraduate studies, Nate decided to stay on the east coast, and subsequently joined the MacMillan group at Princeton for his graduate work. Outside of lab, Nate enjoys attending rock concerts, watching sports and spending time out in nature.

Fun Facts

• Nate has one album of original alternative music out on streaming services (with his band Altair) and hopes to have another finished by the end of 2018.
• Because Nate briefly played baseball during his undergrad years, he is hoping the Backside Attackers departmental softball team will offer him a lucrative contract to play.
• Nate is almost certain that he is the only group member to have never lived in a place as large as Princeton, NJ (as impossible as that sounds).