About Catalina Achim

BS, 1988, University of Bucharest, Romania
MS, 1989, University of Bucharest, Romania
PhD, 1998, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
Postdoctoral fellow, 1999–2001, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Catalina grew up in Macin, Romania, a city of ten thousand people on the board of the river Danube, about two hundred miles away from the Black Sea. The Roman ruins of the city Arrubium can be still seen at the outskirts of Macin and testify to the city’s two thousand-year existence.

She received her B.S. and M.S. in Chemistry from the Faculty of Chemistry of the Polytechnical Institute of Bucharest, Romania. After four years as research analytical chemist at the Meteorological Institute in Bucharest and as teaching assistant in the Department of Inorganic Chemistry of the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Bucharest, she came in 1993 to Carnegie Melon University in Pittsburgh to obtain her Ph.D. She worked with Eckard Münck and Emile Bominaar on the characterization of iron proteins that have electron transfer role and on the structure and function elucidation of non-heme iron-oxo enzymes. In 1999, she joined the laboratory of R. H. Holm at Harvard and worked for two years on synthesis and characterization of mixed-valence iron complexes as well as on the use of peptides as scaffold for Fe-S cluster incorporation. She came back to the Department of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University as Assistant Professor of Inorganic Chemistry in 2001.

Publications

Honors

2006		Sloan Research Fellowship Award
2004		NSF Career Award
2004		ACS PROGRESS/Dreyfus Lectureship
2003		Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award
2001		NIH National Research Service Award
1997		Graduate Student Award of the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh for characterization of novel iron- oxo proteins using Mössbauer spectroscopy
1987-1989		National Merit Scholarship, Romania
1985		2nd Prize in the National Competition for Undergraduates in Analytical Chemistry, Romania

Affiliations

Member of the American Chemical Society

Member of the Society for Biological Inorganic Chemistry

Professional Experience

July 2007-present		Associate Professor Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Chemistry
2001-2007		Assistant Professor Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Chemistry Synthesis and characterization of polynuclear complexes
1999- 2001		Postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Richard H. Holm Harvard University, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology Synthesis and characterization of mixed-valence complexes Solid-phase synthesis of peptides for Fe-S cluster incorporation
1993-1998		Graduate student with Prof. Eckard Münck Department of Chemistry, Carnegie Mellon University Characterization of novel iron-oxo proteins Studies of [2Fe-2S] clusters from wild-type and mutants of C. pasteurianum Theoretical studies of the relation between intra- and intermolecular electron-transfer properties of mixed-valent clusters with Dr. Emile Bominaar.
1991-1993		Research assistant, laboratory of Prof. M. Brezeanu University of Bucharest, Department of Chemistry Synthesis and characterization of platinum complexes with potential biological activity
1989-1991		Chemist, Air Pollution Research Laboratory, Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Bucharest, Romania Developed methods for analysis of trace elements

Recent Publications

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