About Prof. Gorden

Associate Professor

Annie Gorden grew up in Richardson just north of Dallas in Texas, graduating from Berkner High school. After high school, she began her love of research and chemistry as an undergraduate research assistant as a Clark Foundation Grant recipient at the University of Texas at Dallas. She then went on to do her undergraduate studies at Emory University completing a double major in Chemistry and Literature. She returned to Texas to work on her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at The University of Texas at Austin working with National Academy of Sciences member Prof. Jonathan Sessler. A large portion of her Ph.D. research was on expanded porphyrins for detection separations of actinides and this included collaborative research at both Los Alamos National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory. She then went on to do postdoctoral research at The University of California with National Academy of Sciences member Prof. Kenneth Raymond. She was later appointed the inaugural Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Seaborg Center Postdoctoral Research Fellow.  

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Prof. Gorden began her academic career as an assistant professor in organic chemistry at Auburn University in 2005 where she was tenured and promoted in 2011. She and her research group moved to Texas Tech University in the Fall of 2020. Research in the Gorden group has focused programs based on combining interests in organic syntheses and metal coordination chemistry, and her interests have continued in the areas of supramolecular chemistry, the chemistry of the lanthanides and actinides, and catalysis for green or sustainable chemistry.  

Previously, she has been recognized with several awards including the 2010 Delta Gamma Foundation Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence, the 2016 Auburn University Provost’s award for Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Students in Research, and the 2019 Auburn University College of Sciences and Mathematics Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award. She now lives in Lubbock with her husband Mr. Dr. Gorden who is a professor of inorganic chemistry at Texas Tech, son, daughter, and two rescue dogs - Lab mixes that we call the “Lab experiments.”