Episode 66: Dr. Neil Garg on Reimagining Organic Chemistry

Introduction

0:00Hi, you're listening to Let's Talk Chemistry, a podcast by Chemtalk. On today's episode, we interview Dr. Neil Garg, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Garg's work pushes boundaries in both research and education. From challenging a 100-year-old rule in organic chemistry to creating interactive learning tools, he is transforming how students approach, visualize, and think about molecular structures.

0:31We hope you enjoy!

0:34Hi, and welcome back to another episode of Let's Talk Chemistry, a science podcast by Chemtalk. I'm one of your co-hosts, Jasmine, and today I'll be joined by Elizabeth as we share with you the story of Dr. Neil Garg. Dr. Garg is a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA, and his work focuses on synthetic organic chemistry. Dr. Garg's interest in science was not always synthesis, but was something he explored further during his time in undergrad.

Dr Garg's Background

1:03He shared the following about his experience at NYU. My parents encouraged me to go into medicine, and that was kind of the common career path for kids like me that were doing well in the sciences. I was very lucky. I got into NYU, New York University. There, I just started on the pre-med track, but I started to take the chemistry courses because I had to, and it turned out that that went better than I thought it would. Long story short, by the time I took organic chemistry in my second year, that's really probably the first time I ever took a science class that just intuitively made sense to me,

1:36and it wasn't, you know, to me, it just wasn't a lot of memorization. It wasn't a lot of plugging into equations. I just enjoyed it. From there, I got involved in research. NYU was awesome. At the time, they had teaching assistant opportunities. I realized I liked to teach, and so that set me up to abandon the pre-med track despite my parents. I kind of abandoned that and decided to go to graduate school. I was very lucky. I got into Caltech, and I went there and I got my PhD. Undergraduate sounds like the perfect time to truly explore your passions and decide what is a good fit for you. There are so many options in the world of STEM, but also beyond as well.

2:10Yes, I found college is a great opportunity to figure out what field and interests are best for you, especially because there are so many things you can do with your degree. I started undergrad with a big interest in math and science, and I've since focused my interest to be more science-oriented, though I still enjoy math. My biochemistry major has given me a perfect balance of the topics I love most, including biology, organic chemistry, and, of course, biochemistry. It's great to have that flexibility. I personally am interested in environmental engineering and can't wait to explore it more.

2:41Dr. Garg shared how his experience led him to pursue a PhD at Caltech in organic chemistry, which will provide so many opportunities post-grad. And a PhD is a wonderful route to go for students interested in academia and research. There are a variety of research opportunities in academia and industry, and often the two realms can work together to identify a solution.

Current Research Projects

3:03Speaking of, Dr. Garg shared the following about his current research projects in his lab. One of the areas we work in is to make unusual strained intermediates, and last year we published something that was pretty exciting. It's toward a rule in organic chemistry called Brett's Rule that's been around for now over 100 years, and it basically says you can't make a certain type of structure where the double bond is positioned on a certain place of a molecule. And it turns out people had violated that rule many times, just kind of one-off examples here

3:36and there. And we were interested in trying to develop a universal solution to that problem that's been around for such a long time. So that was a pretty exciting thing. We published a study on how to make so-called anti-bred olefins, and it was published in Science, which is a very good journal. And it was kind of exciting because it was breaking a rule that's taught in organic chemistry textbooks, and it got news coverage all over the world. And so now we're still making a lot of unusual-looking molecules that are just not the type of things we teach and start to stretch our imagination when we think about what types of molecules

4:09can be made or can't be made. I think we're starting to push on those boundaries that we've had for many decades. We're trying to push on those a little bit. This work sounds so exciting. As both a research and instructional professor, Dr. Garg's work combines these disciplines. In using what previous researchers have discovered and identifying new routes for discovery, Dr. Garg's group is developing molecules previously never considered to be possible. Yes. Our classes teach us that strained molecules tend to not exist simply because of the energy

4:40required to maintain them. But it's very interesting to learn how these can be used as intermediates to create new molecules. But how do scientists conceptualize new molecules? There are so many different ways to build them, yet only a small number of these are stable, or actually will exist.

4:57Conceptualizing molecules starts with visualization. Visualizing these molecules is not easy when you first start exploring organic chemistry, but Dr. Garg recognizes this and has developed a few visualization tools. The first of these is a website called qrchem.net. What a great idea. On this website, you can search for a molecule and it'll pull up its Lewis dot structure and 3D structure. In addition, it will create a QR code so you can scan it and manipulate the model on your phone. That's a fun new perspective for organic molecules.

5:29Also, over the past few years, Dr. Garg has been developing and refining a new visualization method using virtual reality, which is accessible at vrchem.net. Users that wear the headset would be brought into a fully immersive virtual environment where you can search for a molecule and interact with it. That's a really cool idea. It can be hard to visualize the 3D aspect of molecules with a 2D diagram or sketch, but both of these resources would help students better understand molecular structures, which is essential in determining how molecules interact and react with other molecules.

6:03Let's learn from Dr. Garg more about how it works. We've been working on virtual reality organic chemistry tools for several years, probably since the pandemic. And, you know, classic problem, right? We developed all these tools using the technology available at the time. And then some of the technology changed in this rapidly evolving space of VR. And we realized that rather than being reliant on the technology that existed at the time, we better just create our own. So what we've been doing is developing technology that in principle you could use on any VR headset,

6:34not just an Oculus or something like that. And you could use through a web browser. And I'm happy to say that the technology is moving along very nicely. And we expect to put it online free for use for people wherever they are in the world in early 2026. And we're just ironing out some final kinks. So the downside to that technology is you need access to a VR headset. But with that headset, you should be able to do some really cool things like be able to, instead of having a tiny plastic model, you can have a VR model that is massive,

7:05however big you want it to be, you can walk around a molecule, you can walk inside it, you can stretch it, shrink it, you can throw it away when you're done with it. It's important to understand the fundamentals, like molecular structure, so you can better apply those concepts in different contexts, like organic chemistry. As a matter of fact, Dr. Garg and his team have also created a game called Backside Attack that aims to teach other fundamentals and basic concepts. Just like his other developments, this can be used free of charge. It's wonderful knowing how many tools his team has developed, especially given their

7:38accessibility. Here's more from him. Typically taught in organic chemistry is the FN2 reaction. The reason it's taught is it's a relatively simple reaction once you get the hang of it, but it's a way for us to introduce all these other concepts. What's a nucleophile? What's a leaving group? What happens when you change a solvent? There are all these things that then, if you learn those, you can apply them to the rest of the course. We had a little bit of direction. We just kind of storyboarded it, right? We'd go to the board. We had these terrible pictures of what it looked like, but it's Backside Attack.

8:08We want it to be game-like. So the game starts with, you know, the nucleophile attacks the electrophile. So you shoot the nucleophile, comes out of a syringe. It lands in a beaker where the electrophile happens to be. You draw the arrow pushing mechanism on the screen. So your finger is basically functions to draw mechanism arrows. And then at the end of it, you are typically asked the question, like, if you change this variable, does the reaction become easier or more difficult? And you tap on the screen to provide energy. And based on how hard you have to tap, that correlates with how hard the reaction is. So that's how we incorporate the learning.

8:38And then we actually have some textbook style stuff in there as well. So overall, the process of working with students was really invaluable because they were thinking about what is the content that's helpful for students? How do we make it fun? And how do we make it a little bit like repetition? Like, we don't care if we have to draw the reaction arrows 500 times. If it helps us get it, that's fine. And that was very wonderful. And then I said, do you guys want to try to make money off of this? And they all said they just want it to be free. So we paid for the program. My good friend, Dan Caspi, did all that with us.

9:09And we just put it online on the iOS store. So if you have a Mac computer, you can play it. If you have an iPhone and iPad, you can play it. And again, it's totally free. Something that's both educational and fun. For a topic as complex as organic chemistry. I'm in high school, so I'm pretty far away from taking classes like that. But I've heard some stories from my brother. And organic chemistry and fun don't quite seem to go together. Yeah, I've heard that a lot from my friends and classmates. I tried out Backside Attack in my first organic chemistry class. And it was pretty easy to get the hang of it.

9:40In a way, organic chemistry is similar to a new language. A lot of the core concepts are very unfamiliar at first. But once you learn the language and the vocabulary, it's a lot more straightforward. Well, that's comforting to hear. Once I get there, I'm definitely going to have to try a Backside Attack. Absolutely. Another tool you might want to check out is LearnBacon.com, which is not only a fantastic supplement to existing course material, but also makes connections to pop culture and topics in human health. Bacon is one of our favorite projects that's been around for a while.

10:11Well, there's a website and it's LearnBacon.com, L-E-A-R-N, Bacon.com. So we just wanted to call it Bacon. And then we had to figure out what it stood for. And that's what we came up with. So it's Bacon, but it's biology and chemistry online notes. And all it is, it's actually really simple. There's a bunch of topics like alkenes, alkynes, carbonyl chemistry, things like that. Then might correlate to a typical title of a textbook. When you go to Bacon, it's meant to be a tutorial that takes you about 10 minutes.

10:42It's mostly text and images and some movies. And the content really meant to be minimal. It's meant to be refreshers, core concepts, that's it. It's no deep dives. It's not a lot of text, right? And it's meant to make sure people get those fundamental concepts. And then also it provides context to everything. So everything's related to medicine. Typically, there's a few exceptions to that and pop culture. And now the idea is that when people are doing this, it's a supplement to an existing course.

11:13It's about the fundamentals and making connections to why you should care. It sounds like Dr. Garg has all kinds of different resources to help students and increase engagement for science. Yes. While his work on these websites and VR has helped countless college students around the world, Dr. Garg is also striving to introduce and teach organic chemistry to children. To children? How's he doing that? Here's more from our experts. We teach a camp here at UCLA called Chem Kids and take kids about, I don't know,

11:43eight to 12 years old, something to that effect. And they come here and we bring them into the chemistry building for a week and they do all sorts of activities. So we do teach them some organic chemistry. We teach them how to decipher structures so they can look at what we call a bond line structure. And they know what that means, where the carbon is, how many hydrogens are on each carbon. We teach them how to do that. And then we also teach them how to assign stereocenters. So things that typically students never see until sophomore organic chemistry.

12:15But we teach little kids how to do it because it's just based on a couple of rules. And it turns out the kids are pretty good at that sort of thing. So we teach organic chemistry that way. We work with the children on solving Rubik's cubes. They extract DNA from strawberries and do a couple of other activities to that effect. And we do put them in VR headsets multiple times. So they can then interact with molecules just the same. So we do have a segment where they're going to extract DNA from a strawberry. So in the VR headset, they interact with a large molecule of DNA.

12:46And they can move it around and we have them look at the double helix. But then we also have them choose amongst other molecules they may be interested in. And you might not be surprised, sugar is a popular molecule that most kids like to look at. For our perspective, at that point, they're starting to see what organic molecules are. But it's also just introducing the subject at an early age because otherwise, they have no idea what it is. And by the time they get to college, it's just this scary subject they've never heard of. But we just try to introduce it in a friendly way so they just start to get comfortable with it.

13:17That's wonderful. I've always been taught by my parents and teachers that it's better to start learning things at a young age because kids' brains are more moldable and they can take in more information. Plus, kids are a lot less likely than college students to have heard stories about how difficult certain topics are so they can approach learning these subjects with a much more open mind. Definitely. Dr. Garg has done so much to help make organic chemistry more interesting and accessible for people of all ages. Aside from teaching kids, another top priority of his is to fully launch the VR so more people

13:48can use it and disseminate it.

Motivation and Advice

13:50I am curious, though, what is his motivation? I'm sure it can't be simple to juggle research, VR, and all these other projects. What makes it all worthwhile? Let's hear from him. You know, I remember being in grad school and just working on something really tough. And I said to get out of the lab, I was just going nuts, right? And I went to just grab lunch myself. And I'm there kind of early. There was nobody there except one other guy was on the same line as I was in this cafeteria area. And he was a professor there.

14:20His name is Dave McMillan. You know, this was in, you know, let's say 2020 or 2021, where this interaction happened. He won the Nobel Prize a few years ago. Right? So, but, you know, he was just a new professor then, real casual. And he's like, Neil, what's going on? And I was like, oh, man, this project's tough. No details. Just tell him the usual stuff. And he says to me, he says, that if it wasn't hard, would you still do it? I don't remember if we actually talked about it or not in my, you know, your memory of these moments, like you just walked away and I had this realization.

14:50But it was a very like profound thing to say. And I offer that to students here all the time. If it was really easy, we would not do it. And so it does take a lot of perseverance to do what we do. But the motivation is almost always just the intellectual curiosity. So for people who are just like intellectually curious, these sorts of things, although really challenging, they're fun. And the other part of it that makes all of it really fun for people like me is getting to work with, I think, some of the smartest people in the world.

15:20The other thing is we do here is that a lot of our projects are done in teams. There's a big team focus in my lab and different lab, different people run their labs differently. Almost all of our projects in my group are done in teams. And that's partially because if you have two people on a project, it's like their brain power is like four times and not just double. So if you have two people working together, the intellectual output, I think, turns out to be really high. That's an amazing way to think about it. When something's challenging, you often have to work harder and persevere through it and

15:51any setbacks that may arise. But once you've achieved your goal, the difficulty makes that success worth so much more. I completely agree. I also love what you said about teamwork. Teamwork solves countless problems and combined with intellectual curiosity, so many possibilities are opened. Absolutely. To wrap things up, here's some advice from Dr. Garg for students. There's this expression from my friend Sue Baumgarten. It's to be an opportunity activist. Tough to do in practice, right?

16:21But there's so many opportunities that come your way. What do you do? I don't know. Sounds a little scary. You know, I think that's a very common way to respond to a potential opportunity that comes your way or maybe made the tendencies to have some apprehension or to say no. I think the perspective there is that you don't know what an opportunity holds until you try it. And be active about pursuing opportunities and not be scared to pursue opportunities. If you try something and you don't like it, that's fine. It's the process of going through and exploring different opportunities that helps us figure

16:53out what do we enjoy, what's important to us. So my advice would always be to be an opportunity activist. Look for opportunities. Not be shy about diving into them. Give them your best. And it's okay if they don't work out. That's fine. That's normal. That's part of the process of figuring out what's important to you. And then for college students, this is going to be controversial, but I would avoid summer classes. Go do something fun. Again, be an opportunity activist. There's more to life than summer classes. I took biology over the summers at NYU.

17:24Not a fan. It's a lot of information in a short period of time. And life only gets more intense. Not worse. It just gets only more intense with more responsibilities. Summers are a special time when you're an undergraduate student to experience other things, deflate a little bit from the academic rigor. Get bored. It's okay to get bored because then when you come back, you come back excited. Wow. Any student would benefit from hearing that, not just college students. Summer is a special time because there's no homework, assessments, or other school obligations.

17:56You have a lot more time to delve into all kinds of opportunities and figure out what you want to do. Who knows? Maybe there are different fields or career paths or even hobbies that would be fantastic for you. If you never try, how will you know? Exactly. Dr. Garg's views on college classes and boredom are also quite insightful. It's okay to not cram your schedule with classes. That gives more time to explore new things, rest, and even have a little boredom, which is totally fine. He also shared the following for those pursuing a PhD.

18:27Things have been challenging with federal funding for everybody in academia. And that has put a lot of stress on the system. But I think the worst part about it is the stress it puts on the students and the postdocs who are here studying for their degree. They're teaching the Chem Kids Camp over the summer in their free time. They're doing Exploring Your Universe, right? These activities on campus that are good for society. And as I would just give all of the students there a shout out for being resilient through

19:00whatever is happening in the current climate and to encourage them to keep doing that. That's really the celebration that we should have is just making sure we celebrate students who are going through this tough time and figuring out how to persevere, how they're still publishing papers and they're still getting a world-class education despite all that. I think it's pretty spectacular. For somebody like me, it's important to know that the people that are getting their education here are ready to solve the very serious problems that we have as a society as they go forward. And I think the students have been resilient in understanding that's why they're here and

19:33in doing their best to get that education so that they can go out and do whatever they want to do to benefit the world. That's really meaningful. It's great to know that there is so much support both in the lab and among other labs. Yes, and really understanding what you want out of your education will help you make the most of it. I agree. Thank you so much to Dr. Garg for sharing your knowledge and advice with us. And to all our listeners, thank you for tuning in. Until next time, I'm Elizabeth. And I'm Jasmine. Until next time, bye.

20:04Thank you for listening to Let's Talk Chemistry, a podcast by Chemtalk. We hope you enjoyed it. For more information on today's episode and countless chemistry resources, please visit our website at www.chemistrytalk.org.