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
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. 
Filed under: Group News, Science, Students | Tags: calendar, CIC, CSC, Inorganic Chemistry, prize, student
Thank you and congratulations to Marcus Drover (Mr. April) for having his entry selected for inclusion in the first calendar prepared by the inorganic division of the CSC. It is available for download in pdf format, if you click HERE! We hope that future students will submit entries and also be selected for inclusion – what a great artistic way to tell the world about your chemistry research!
Filed under: Conferences, Group News, Group Photos, Science, Students | Tags: Canadian Chemistry, chemistry, CSC, green chemistry, poster
Chris, Fran, Khaled and Nduka have been enjoying the science and Albertan hospitality at the CSC
Chris and Fran spoke in the metal-mediated polymerization symposium organized by Mike Shaver and Paul Hayes. Nduka presented his poster in the same symposium on Sunday evening and Khaled presented his poster in the Industrial division on Monday night.
Thanks to all the organizers and volunteers for a fantastic meeting.
Filed under: Group News, Science, St. John's | Tags: biodegradable plastics, green chemistry, Memorial University, polycarbonate, polylactide, research, sustainable development
Chris was interviewed on the Rogers TV St. John’s local television program “Out of the Fog” yesterday. The segment discussed the problems with currently used plastics and how biodegradable and renewably-sourced plastics, such as those being investigated in the MUN Green Chemistry Group, may be able to address some of the long term environmental issues.
Filed under: Group News, Science | Tags: biorefinery, canada, ChemSusChem, chitin, chitosan, DAAD RISE, glucosamine, green chemistry, Memorial University, research, sustainable development
Congratulations to Khaled on his Departmental Seminar yesterday.
He received two bits of exciting news today:
1) His research on the production of levulinic acid and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural has made it into the top ten most accessed articles in Green Chemistry for April 2012.
2) His full paper on the formation of an amidofuran from N-acetyl D-glucosamine has been accepted for publication in the prestigious journal ChemSusChem. (Impact Factor, 6.3). In this work, we note that the presence of main-group elements (B & Cl) in your feedstock can have a significant effect on the reaction outcomes.
Also, congratulations to Linda (one of our DAAD RISE summer researchers who visited our group in summer 2011) – who is a co-author on the ChemSusChem paper.
Filed under: Group News, Science, Students | Tags: caprolactone, chemistry, DAAD RISE, kinetics, lithium complexes, MALDI-TOF, ROP
A second paper by group members has been accepted today for publication. This time in Dalton Transactions.
The paper is called: Ring-opening polymerization of ε-caprolactone by lithium piperazinyl-aminephenolate complexes: Synthesis, characterization and kinetic studies
Dalton Trans., DOI:10.1039/C2DT30276D
Nduka is a PhD candidate in our group and Christian was a visiting student from Germany who joined our group last summer on a DAAD RISE scholarship. They worked really hard to get all the kinetic data and the MALDI-TOF spectra presented in this paper. Thanks also to Louise for the two structures included.
Filed under: Group News, Science, Students | Tags: green chemistry, Publication, RSC Advances, students
Their manuscript has just been accepted for publication in RSC Advances. (This is a new interdisciplinary journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry)
RSC Adv., DOI:10.1039/C2RA20578E
Khaled is a PhD candidate in the MUN Green Chemistry & Catalysis Group. Marcus obtained his results during an NSERC USRA in the group during summer 2011 and Jen held a SWASP position in the group at the same time.
Filed under: Conferences, Group News, Science | Tags: iron chemistry, kozak, science news, seminar
Leeds at Night (by Andrew Roberts, UK)
Chris Kozak visited the School of Chemistry at the University of Leeds last week. He gave a departmental seminar on iron catalyzed reactions being studied by his students at Memorial University. Iron is popular metal to use in metal-catalyzed reactions for organic synthesis because it is cheap and non-toxic.
Filed under: Group News, Group Photos, Science, St. John's, Students | Tags: carbon dioxide, chemistry, Green polymers, Memorial University, research, students
The St. John’s arts and entertainment magazine, “The Scope”, recently published an article in their on-line edition on some of the work occurring in the MUN Green Chemistry and Catalysis Group. Entitled “Great future in green plastics“, the article by Dave Jerome describes the research on degradable plastics that is being performed by Justin Belanger and other students in the group.
Green Chemistry @ MUN 