Filed under: Group News, Students | Tags: defence, Graduate Studies, PhD student
Nduka successfully defended his thesis yesterday afternoon. Thank you to everyone involved. The examiners: Parisa Mehrkhodavandi (UBC), Bob Davis (MUN) and Peter Warburton (MUN). The chair: Shirley Solberg (MUN). The staff in the School of Graduate Studies and the members of the chemistry department who came out to offer support incl. current and past supervisory committee members, Louise Dawe and Chris Kozak.
Filed under: Chemistry Professors, Group News, Science, Students | Tags: carbon dioxide, news, publications, science, students
Fran, Nduka (PhD 2008-2013) and Jenna (PhD 2011-2015) wrote a short review article on copolymerization of carbon dioxide with epoxides late last year and early this year. It has been accepted for publication in a special issue of Dalton Transactions on the topic of “Advances in Metal-Catalysed Polymerisation and Related Transformations”. Although Aluminum catalysts are generally less-reactive than some state of the art catalysts for such reactions, there is significant scope to develop new systems based on this cheap metal. For example, Aluminum can catalyse many different types of polymerization reactions and so one could imagine preparing terpolymers (polymers made up of 3 different sub-units/monomers) or even more complex materials.
Here is a link to the article: http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2013/dt/c3dt00049d
Graphical Abstract for Perspective on Al catalysts for carbon dioxide-epoxide copolymerizations
Khaled Omari, a recent graduate of the group (PhD, Dr. Kerton), will soon be moving to Nova Scotia to begin Postdoctoral Research at Cape Breton University in collaboration with B.W.BioEnergy Inc. Congratulations on your new position and we hope you enjoy life in Sydney and your new research endeavours are as successful as those during your PhD.
Filed under: Group News, Science | Tags: biodegradable plastics, catalysis, graduate research, Green polymers, lactide, lithium, Publication, undergraduate research
The journal Dalton Transactions has accepted a paper from the Kozak group describing the work of Rebecca (PhD 2012), Amy (B.Sc. 2010) and Hua (M.Sc. in progress) on lithium complexes that polymerize rac-lactide. We thank our co-authors Celine Schneider and Louise Dawe for help with valuable solid-state NMR and X-ray diffraction studies.
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.
Green Chemistry @ MUN 