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Laina was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. She completed her B.Sc.(Hons.) in 2005 at the University of Manitoba with first class honours. She stayed at the U of M to pursue a Ph.D. under the guidance of Prof. Philip Hultin. As an NSERC postgraduate scholar, she studied the behavior of trichloroethylene derivatives under palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling conditions and developed new routes to benzofurans and indoles via Pd-catalyzed C-H functionalization and earned a Ph.D. in 2010.

She then joined the research lab of Prof. Michael Krische at the University of Texas at Austin where she studied ruthenium(II)- and iridium(I) catalyzed propargylation reactions. In 2011, Laina became one of the inaugural recipients of a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship through NSERC. Laina's last projects at UT involved the discovery and development of two new patterns of reactivity of ruthenium(0) catalysts.

Laina joined the University of Nevada, Reno in July 2014 as an assistant professor.

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See here to contact Laina.

Selected Honours & Awards

EDUCATION & POSITIONS

Assistant Professor

University of Nevada, Reno

NSF CAREER (2018)

Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship (2011)

NSERC PGSD (2007)

NSERC PGSM (2006)

Manitoba Graduate Fellowship (2005)

Faculty of Science Most Outstanding Graduating Student (2005)

Canadian Society for Chemistry Silver Medal (2004)

Banting Postdoctoral Fellow

University of Texas at Austin

Ph.D., NSERC Predoctoral Fellow

University of Manitoba

B.Sc.(Hons.)

University of Manitoba

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