Prof. Blum began her independent research career in 2006 at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). Blum’s research focuses on the development and mechanistic study of reactions in organic, organometallic, catalytic, and materials chemistry, and on monitoring reaction intermediates by a combination of traditional spectroscopy and fluorescence microscopy methods. While many of her initial independent research publications were based on activated complexes of gold or palladium catalysts, she has more recently focused on borylation reactions to make advanced oxygen-, nitrogen-, or sulfur-containing heterocycles, amenable to pharmaceutical and agricultural derivation. Since starting her independent career, Blum developed single-molecule and single-particle techniques, often borrowed from biological or physical contexts, to study chemical processes, including to observe intermediates in "classical" reactions. Blum was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2017 for distinguished contributions to molecular chemistry, particularly for the development of synthetic methods and of fluorescence microscopy tools to study chemical processes.