The Green Chemistry and Catalysis Group are very happy to welcome Jeremy O’Brien, Cody O’Brien, Rebecca Quilty and Kelly Mitchelmore to the group for the summer. They have all just completed their 2nd year at MUN and are either enrolled in the biochemistry or chemistry programs. We also welcome Rebecca O’Leary who is a student at McGill University and is volunteering with our group this summer.
We hope you all enjoy your first summer of research……and that you find the thrill of new discoveries as exciting as we know it is 🙂
Image by Ramesh NG (Flickr.com)
Filed under: Group News, Science, Students | Tags: news, students, Vanier award
Congratulations to Marcus Drover for being awarded a Vanier CGS award. This means he was ranked as one of the top new doctoral graduate students in any discipline (science, engineering, health/medicine, social sciences and humanities) across Canada! These scholarships are valued at $50,000 per year for three years…..don’t forget to save some of those funds for during a future postdoc, Marcus! 😉 and good luck with your current research.
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- Group Photo, Summer 2011
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- Xmas 2010
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- Presenting poster at CSC 2011, Montreal
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- Xmas 2011
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- Montreal Group Meal Summer 2011
Marcus is currently pursuing graduate studies in chemistry at UBC under the supervision of Prof. Jen Love and Prof. Laurel Schafer.
He graduated from MUN with a BSc (Hons) degree in 2012. He performed research with several supervisors during his time here. He held SWASP and MUCEP positions in Dr. Kerton‘s group during 2010 (studying Aluminum coordination chemistry). He also worked with Dr. Pansare on organic chemistry in summer 2010 too (Canada Summer Jobs). In summer 2011, after his 3rd year at MUN, he worked in Dr. Kerton‘s group again – this time on biomass conversion – whilst being supported by an NSERC USRA. During the academic year 2011/2012, he worked in Dr. Kerton’s group in collaboration with Dr. Celine Schneider, studying Li and Bi coordination chemistry, and both solution and solid-state multinuclear NMR spectroscopy. An image based on his honours project was selected for inclusion in the student calendar of the Inorganic Division, Chemical Institute of Canada. In summer 2012, he had a second NSERC USRA award and worked with Prof. Laurie Thompson on coordination complexes and supramolecular assembly.
Publications which Marcus co-authored during his time in the Kerton group include:
1. 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
Graphical Abstract from RSC Advances paper (2012) – First Author, Marcus Drover
2. N. Ikpo, S. Barbon, M. Drover, L. N. Dawe and F. M. Kerton*, “Aluminum methyl and chloro complexes bearing monoanionic aminephenolate ligands: synthesis, characterization and use in polymerizations”, Organometallics, 2012, 31, 8145-8158, http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/om300757u
3. M. Drover and co-authors, Lithium complexes of amine-phenolate ligands, Manuscript in preparation.
4. M. Drover and co-authors, Bismuth complexes of amine-phenolate ligands, Manuscript in preparation.
Green chemistry and the ocean-based biorefinery – Green Chemistry (RSC Publishing).
Our perspective is available free for the next 6 weeks! so please read it 🙂
We also have the inside cover page and Anna Simpson (Deputy Editor for Green Chemistry) talks about our paper in the Green Chemistry Blog.
Filed under: Conferences, Group News, Group Photos, Science, Students | Tags: AIDW, conference
Chris, Fran, Kata, Hua and Jenna attended the Atlantic Inorganic Discussion Weekend in Moncton from March 22-24. We all had a fantastic time and enjoyed 2 or 3 Plenary lectures (some of us missed Prof. Stephan’s talk because we were still en route from Toronto), 3 mixers, several coffee breaks and lots of student/postdoc talks and lectures (about 24 talks and 24 posters were presented). We also got to meet, network and socialize with chemists from Atlantic Canada and further afield. We are already looking forward to the next AIDW, which will probably be held in 2015 somewhere in the region.
Photos (Top: Poster session and Bottom: Thai/Vietnamese meal) from the AIDW conference held in Moncton and organized by Glen Briand and Steve Westcott from Mount Allison University
Filed under: Group News, Science, Students | Tags: aminocarbohydrates, biomass, green chemistry, renewables
Fran, Khaled (PhD 2008-2012), Yi (PhD 2011-2015) and Kelly (Engineering) wrote a perspective (short review) on the possibility of producing chemicals and new materials from ocean-sourced biomass. This has now been accepted for publication in the journal Green Chemistry.
A figure from the paper summarizing some of the potential products/materials available from marine sources
Graphical Abstract for the Perspective
Here is a link to the article: http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2013/GC/C3GC36994C
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
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.
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
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
Green Chemistry @ MUN 