Melanie Sanford

Melanie Sanford (born June 16, 1975) is an American chemist, who currently works at the University of Michigan, where she holds the positions of Moses Gomberg Collegiate Professor of Chemistry and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Chemistry. Sanford is best known for her studies of high-valent organopalladium species, particularly those implicated in Pd-catalyzed C–H functionalization reactions. She has received numerous awards and honors, including a 2011 MacArthur Fellowship and the 2013 Sackler Prize in Chemistry. She is also a Fellow for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016.

Sanford was born and grew up in Providence, Rhode Island. She attended Classical High School.

She graduated from Yale University with a BS and MS in 1996, having carried out research with Robert H. Crabtree, while competing for the Yale Gymnastics NCAA team. She graduated from the California Institute of Technology with a Ph.D. in 2001, where she studied with Robert H. Grubbs. She did postdoctoral work at Princeton University, where she studied with John T. Groves.