University of Chicago

Assistant Professor (2025 – present)

University of California, Los Angeles

NIH Postdoctoral Fellow (2023 – 2025)

Advisor: Prof. Abigail Doyle

California Institute of Technology

Ph.D. in Chemistry (2018 – 2023)

Advisor: Prof. Brian Stoltz with Prof. William Goddard III

North Carolina State University

B.S. in Chemistry (2014 – 2018)

Advisor: Prof. Joshua Pierce

Alex was born in St. Petersburg, Florida. He received a B.S. in Chemistry from North Carolina State University in 2018, where he conducted research with Professor Joshua Pierce focused on the development of methods for heterocycle and anti-microbial agent synthesis. After a summer internship at Merck, Alex pursued a Ph.D. in chemistry at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in the group of Professor Brian Stoltz with further advisory from Professor William Goddard III. A significant focus of Alex’s graduate research centered around the development of Pd-catalyzed cross-couplings harnessing asymmetric pericyclic reactions from chiral Pd enolate intermediates as a fundamental bond-forming strategy. State-of-the-art computational tools and mechanistic studies ultimately enabled development of methodologies that forge a variety of complex molecular scaffolds and stereochemical arrays. After earning his Ph.D. in 2023, Alex joined the laboratory of Professor Abigail Doyle as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). There, his research focused on the exploration of light-driven organometallic reactivity in the context of base metal catalysis. In 2025, Alex joined the University of Chicago as an assistant professor of chemistry.

Email: aqcusumano ‘at’ uchicago.edu

Phone: (773) 702-7132