Ellen M. Sletten

Associate Professor
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
University of California, Los Angeles

Prof. Ellen Sletten received her BS in Chemistry from Stonehill College in 2006 where she worked in the laboratory of Prof. Louis Liotta on the synthesis of alkaloid glycosidase inhibitors. During her undergraduate education, she also performed research in Prof. Kara Bren’s group at the University of Rochester and Prof. Neil Thomas’s group at the University of Nottingham. Ellen pursued her PhD in Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley with Prof. Carolyn Bertozzi where she received an ACS Division of Organic Chemistry Fellowship. Her thesis work involved the optimization and development of bioorthogonal chemistries and their subsequent applications in labeling living systems. Upon graduation in 2011, Ellen joined the laboratory of Prof. Tim Swager at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow where she worked with soft fluorous materials for use in fluorescent sensors. Ellen joined the faculty in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA as an Assistant Professor and John McTague Career Development Chair in 2015. She was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in July 2021, followed by Vice Chair for Graduate Education in July 2022.

Ellen’s curriculum vitae