Chris and his research make an appearance in the president’s annual report/highlights. There is a link to the full report through today.mun.ca Congratulations to Chris on this honour (builidng on his Suncor Young Innovator award)
Filed under: Group News, Science | Tags: aluminum, biodegradable plastics, caprolactone, carbon dioxide, catalysis, chemistry, chromium, Coordination Chemistry, Green polymers, Publication, undergraduate research
Yesterday, the profs got good news from the publishers 😀
Dr. Kerton’s paper was accepted by Organometallics and Dr. Kozak’s paper was accepted by Dalton Transactions.
The Organometallics paper is about the synthesis and reactivity of some aluminum complexes. Some of the compounds were prepared for the first time by Marcus Drover (during his SWASP in summer 2010) and Stephanie Barbon (in summer 2011 as an NSERC USRA/ICE student). Kinetic studies were performed by Nduka on their activity in ring-opening polymerization of caprolactone. He also discovered that the chloride complex could initiate the copolymerization of carbon dioxide and cyclohexene oxide. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/om300757u
The Dalton Transactions paper contains research results from Rebecca’s PhD thesis on copolymerization of carbon dioxide with propylene oxide and addition reactions between styrene oxide and carbon dioxide. This is the second paper published from the Kozak group Cr catalysts for this reaction (Paper 1: Inorg. Chem. 2012) and also builds on results obtained using related Co complexes (Catalysis Communications 2012).
A big thank you to Louise Dawe for her expertise in X-ray crystallography and to all the students involved!
Al complexes for ring-opening polymerization of caprolactone and activation of carbon dioxide
Congratulations to Khaled, who defended his PhD thesis yesterday.
Thank you to all involved in the defence: the examiners, the chair, and those who work in the School of Graduate Studies especially Ruby and Elizabeth.
Photo after Khaled’s defence: Dr. Schlaf (University of Guelph) and Dr. Kerton attended via webcamera. Dr. Solberg was Chair. Dr. Helleur and Dr. Hawboldt (not in photo) were the internal examiners.
Now, Khaled is busy making the necessary corrections to his thesis so that it can be submitted for binding.
Khaled’s PhD research has been published in the three articles listed here. Links are provided below.
K. W. Omari, L. Dodot and F. M. Kerton*, “A Simple One-Pot Dehydration Process to Convert N-acetyl-D-glucosamine into a Nitrogen-Containing Compound, 3-acetamido-5-acetylfuran”, ChemSusChem, 2012, 5, 1767-72, cssc.201200113
M. W. Drover, K. W. Omari, J. N. Murphy and F. M. Kerton*, “Formation of a renewable amide via direct conversion of N-acetyl-D-glucosamine”, RSC Adv., 2012, 2, 4642-4643, DOI:10.1039/C2RA20578E
K. W. Omari, J. E. Besaw and F. M. Kerton*, “Hydrolysis of Chitosan Into Levulinic Acid and 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural In Water Under Microwave Irradiation”, Green Chemistry, 2012, 14, 1480-1487, DOI:10.1039/C2GC35048C. One of the top ten most-accessed articles in Green Chem. in April 2012.
Filed under: Group News, Students | Tags: carbon dioxide, chemistry, green, MSc, PhD, sustainable
Dr. Kozak and Dr. Kerton plan to recruit several new graduate students to being in Fall 2013. (Dr. Kozak also has funding for students to begin in Jan or May 2013).
Projects include:
1. Copolymerization and related transformations of carbon dioxide using chromium (Kozak group) and aluminum (Kerton group) complexes.
2. Catalytic transformations using earth abundant metals, e.g. iron (Kozak group)
3. Catalytic transformations of a renewable amide (Kerton group)
If you are interesting in joining our research team, please contact us for more information. All applications must be submitted via the School of Graduate Studies. Stipends for students in the PhD program are $20,000 per year and in the MSc program, $18,000 per year.
Students in our group gain (1) interdisciplinary training inorganic/organic/analytical in a recently refurbished laboratory; (2) hands on experience using a range of instruments; (3) opportunities to travel and to collaborate.
Most MSc students have published 1 or 2 papers and PhD students 3-5 papers during their studies. See publication lists for more detail.
Currently, we have no funding for postdoctoral fellows BUT researchers are encouraged to apply for Government of Canada Fellowships etc. see details on bottom half of this page.
Filed under: Chemistry Professors, Conferences, Group News, Group Photos, Science | Tags: carbon dioxide, glucosamine, green chemistry, poster, renewable feedstock, sustainable development
Chris and Fran have just returned from their travels in Europe after attending the GRC on Green Chemistry (in Barga, Italy). This meeting was fantastic in terms of science, location, people……in fact it was probably one of the best conferences we have ever been to! Thank you to all who made it the event it was.
Fran gave a talk on the first morning entitled “Chemical transformations of aminocarbohydrates”, which prompted some good discussion and we’ve come away with lots of great new ideas. Chris and Fran also presented their posters over the course of the week, and got to meet some fantastic people.
Filed under: Group News, Science, Students | Tags: CO2 fixation, Copolymerization, polycarbonates
Congratulations to graduate student Rebecca Dean on her recent paper on chromium-catalyzed copolymerization of CO2 and cyclohexene oxide, which will shortly appear in the journal Inorganic Chemistry.
Table of Contents Graphic from the paper
Filed under: Chemistry Professors, Conferences, Group News, Group Photos, Science, Students | Tags: catalysis, conferences, poster
Chris presents his poster in Toulouse
Chris, Fran and Justin attended this international conference during the past week. We saw lots of great talks and presented our posters alongside many other delegates……we also ate far too much good food and drank too much wine thanks to the generous hospitality of our hosts. Next time (July 2014) the conference is being held in Ottawa, Canada. The website for the next ISHC is found here.
Fran presents her poster in Toulouse
Check out the following link on the Green Chemistry journal’s site to read about Fran’s author profile, how she became interested in green chemistry, and how she very well could have become a singing sensation instead (without having to go on “Idol”!)
C.K.
Cover of recent Green Chemistry issue
Filed under: Group News, Science, Students | Tags: Amine-bis(phenolate) Ligands, Capricious Coordination Chemistry of Cobalt Complexes, Cobalt Chemistry, Crystal Structures, Kobold
A paper describing the collective work of three undergraduates in the Green Chemistry and Catalysis Group has been accepted for publication in the journal Polyhedron. The work was done by Lisa Saunders (who is headed for grad school at Queen’s U.) during a USRA project, Michelle Pratt during a MUCEP work term (who is starting at MUN medical school this September) and Sarah Hann, who was employed as a summer research assistant in the group and is currently a med. student at MUN.
The paper is entitled: “Structural Variations in the Coordination Chemistry of Amine-bis(phenolate) Cobalt(II/III) Complexes” and should appear on-line shortly. Thanks to Lisa, Michelle and Sarah for their hard work on these capricious cobalt complexes, and to Andreas Decken (UNB Crystallography Service) and Louise Dawe (C-CART XRD lab) for their expertise. 
Green Chemistry @ MUN 