Green Chemistry @ MUN

Our group participates in quite a few social events within the department/University and outside.

Last week, we took part in the fundraising Trivia Night organized by the MUN Undergraduate Chemistry Society. Team Kerton came 3rd and beat Team Kozak that came 4th. We all had a fun time.

Photos from events can be found here: Photos from Trivia Night

More to come as we are out to watch a hockey game tonight, and then department Xmas party in a week.

The deadline for Canadian and Permanent Resident students to apply for NSERC Masters Scholarships is quickly approaching. The deadline is December 1st (http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Students-Etudiants/PG-CS/CGSM-BESCM_eng.asp).

Please consider MUN and our group as a possible location for your future studies. MUN provides $5k award to all scholarship holders and other sources of additional funding are also available. If you apply to our graduate program and are accepted, we can often arrange for you to visit our University too.

There are many chances to do research in Chemistry at Memorial University.

Our group (Green Chemistry & Catalysis) conducts interdisciplinary research in areas important for environmental sustainability.  Students learn a range of skills including inorganic and organic synthesis, spectroscopy, experimental physical chemistry (e.g. kinetics), analytical chemistry, materials chemistry.

Our group is well-equipped with state of the art equipment for making and characterizing molecules. If you would like to look around our lab, meet our team and see if our group is the right match for you or if you just don’t know if research is for you and would like to talk to someone – please get in touch. We can arrange for you to chat with a prof, a grad student and/or an undergrad student.

If you are thinking of conducting honours research (Chem 490 A/B) in 2017/18, we have many projects available. Prior research experience is not necessary!

2 undergraduates in our lab, summer 2016

One of Dr. Fran Kerton’s friends from her grad student days has found the archived website for the Lawless group. Fran did her PhD under the supervision of Dr. Gerry Lawless at the University of Sussex from 1995-1999. This website appears to be from 1996 so is 20 years old!  The very early days of the internet

http://archive.ec/q2Mr8

Fran’s photo, as a new grad student then, is beneath the larger group photo. She was the only woman in the group!

Fran did research on organometallic chemistry and polymerizations. She published 2 papers from her PhD but had data for a lot, lot more, which can be found in her thesis. In addition to her published work on polypyrrole synthesis in supercritical carbon dioxide and on the first structurally-authenticated titanocene, she had results on zirconium, manganese, tin and silicon cyclopentadienyl compounds (and ethylene polymerization using Zr-Cp comlexes), titanium 47/49 multinuclear NMR (and Si and Sn NMR data) and ytterbium amide/cyclopentadientyl chemistry.

Last Thursday was Fall convocation. Yi payed us a visit after receiving her MSc degree and we celebrated at the Grad Pub on campus, Bitters.

Here are a couple of photos:

Yi is now completing a PhD with Prof. Bruce Arndtsen at McGill University.

During her time at MUN, Yi “Charlene” worked with Chris Kozak on ROP reactions catalyzed by Zn complexes. (She should not be confused with our other Yi, who works with Fran Kerton on dehydration reactions of N-acteyl-D-glucosamine and related chemistry)

Here’s a link to a video on St. John’s: https://vimeo.com/185322106

It is a relaxing and fun city to live in. Get in touch if you are interested in pursuing research here.  In some cases, Canadian MSc/PhD applicants can come to visit and have their costs reimbursed.

We were very lucky to have 3 talented German chemistry students visit our group for the past 2 months. Thank you so much for all your hard work Lilo, Laura and Friedi. Safe travels home and continued best wishes as you complete your undergraduate degrees. Auf Wiedersehen!

Lilo, Laura and Friedi watching a 3-D movie at the Johnson Geo-Centre in St. John’s

Dean of Science,  Dr. Mark Abrahams, giving the Distinguished Scholar Medal to Dr. Fran Kerton

Fran was honoured to received the Faculty of Science’s Distinguished Scholar Medal last week. This is for “outstanding and sustained contributions which demonstrate a balanced approach to scholarly activities in both teaching and research“. Dr Kerton and her group perform research in the area of Green Chemistry – specifically related to sustainability issues surrounding our ocean environment including valorization of fishery/aquaculture waste, carbon dioxide as a C1 feedstock and degradable polymer synthesis. In teaching, she has been teaching introductory inorganic chemistry for a number of years, and also teaches green chemistry, organometallics, catalysis and general chemistry.

Welcome back to Tyler!

Tyler worked with us this past summer preparing some coordination compounds of iron for use as catalysts. He will be continuing his research part-time this semester as a 40 h MUCEP and will be working alongside Kori. Hopefully, they will discover some interesting reactivity of the iron compounds during the course of the Fall semester. Good luck in the lab!

Tyler Brown (NSERC USRA 2016, MUCEP Fall 2016) on the London Eye

Simon has been awarded a ‘teaching’ MUCEP with Dr. Kerton. He completed his BSc degree including research with Dr. Bodwell a few years ago and is looking forward to pursuing an MSc degree in the future. He will be helping Dr. Kerton upgrade/modernize some of the Chem 2210 labs and also helping out with some organic chemistry research time-permitting.

Simon Brake in our main research lab space, C5006