Theodor Agapie
Office: Noyes 314
Laboratory: Noyes 301-309, Jorgensen 201, 208
Phone: 626-395-3617
Email: [email protected]
Administrative Assistant: Margarita Davis
Office: Noyes 134
Phone: 626-395-6856
Email: [email protected]
Mailing address:
Department of Chemistry, MC 127-72
1200 East California Boulevard
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA 91125
Theodor Agapie was born in 1979 in Bucharest, Romania. He received his B.Sc. degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001 and his Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology in 2007. Upon completion of his Ph.D. he moved to University of California, Berkeley as a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow.
Theo developed his passion for chemistry during high school and participated in chemistry competitions; he won two silver medals at the International Chemistry Olympiads as part of the Romanian team. While an undergraduate at MIT, he worked with Professor Christopher C. Cummins for more that three and a half years on atom and fragment transfer chemistry involving metal complexes, on titanium-ketyl radical chemistry, and on DFT computations to detail the electronic structure of synthesized complexes. At graduation, he received the Chemistry Department's Alpha Chi Sigma Award for achievement in research, scholarship, and service to the department. At Caltech, Theo worked under the tutelage of Professor John E. Bercaw on mechanistic and synthetic aspects of chromium-based olefin oligomerization catalysis and on developing new early transition metal nonmetallocene olefin polymerization catalysts. His Ph.D. thesis received Caltech's Chemistry Department Herbert Newby McCoy Award for outstanding contribution to the science of chemistry. Upon graduation, in May 2007, Theo moved to UC Berkeley to work with Professor Michael A. Marletta as a Miller Institute Fellow. There, he focused on mechanistic aspects of biochemical nitric oxide synthesis involving the metalloprotein nitric oxide synthase.
Theo returned to Caltech on February 11, 2009 to start his independent career as Assistant Professor of Chemistry. He was promoted to Professor of Chemistry in December, 2014. Selected awards include the Searle Award (2010), Sloan Fellowship (2012), NSF CAREER Award (2012), ACS Award in Pure Chemistry (2013), Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE, 2014), and Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2014).