Phil Dennison named Physical Sciences Instructor of the Month
When he's not training our scientists how to unravel the structure of chemical compounds, Dennison's either playing at his drum set or he's busy curating a vast collection of CDs and LPs.
Phil Dennison, who’s the director of the nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) facility in the UCI Department of Chemistry, was named the School of Physical Sciences’ Instructor of the month for February, 2022. There are four instruments in the facility at UCI, and Phil is in charge of training our UCI’s postdocs, grad students and undergrads to use the powerful instruments to determine the chemical structures of compounds that they have either purified or synthesized. At any time there are around 300 active users of the spectrometers, and around 150 new users are trained each year. “The most rewarding part is instructing users in advanced multidimensional or multinuclear experiments to gain vital information to advance their research,” said Dennison. When he’s not working, Phil immerses himself in music; frequenting live music events in OC and LA, and at home “my wife has come to accept my collection of around 6,000 CDs and LPs and my drum set,” said Phil. And when the music’s not playing, “one of my favorite things to do is curl up on the sofa with my wife, Annie, two cats, Mojo and Mimi, to watch or read ‘Nordic Noir’ crime fiction.”