Green Chemistry @ MUN

Today we are celebrating our wonderful graduates. Mikhailey held a MUCEP position in the Kozak group working alongside Keegan Start M.Sc. on iron-catalyzed coupling reactions. She then did her honours research in the Kerton group working with Juliana Vidal (PhD candidate) on biodegradable polymers, including a collaboration with the Sit group at St. Mary’s University. We are excited to cheer Mikhailey across the virtual convocation/graduation stage as she receives her B.Sc.(Hons) Degree in Chemistry. Congratulations Mikhailey! We are excited to have you stay in the MUN Green Chemistry and Catalysis Group for your M.Sc. studies beginning in September 😀

Congrats to Ju (Kerton Group), who will be one of three early career chemists representing Canada in Trinidad and Tobago during May. More details are available in the ACCN magazine: https://www.cheminst.ca/magazine/article/commonwealth-chemistry-struts-its-stuff/

We wish all the Canadian representatives including Dr. Mona Nemer (the government of Canada’s Chief Science Advisor) and Dr. Steven Holdcroft (vice-president of the CSC) a wonderful congress! and a successful visit to the Caribbean.

**Postscript: March 6, 2020, the congress has been postponed due to concerns regarding travel and the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19)**

Today was the first day in the lab for our new undergraduate research assistants April (Kozak group) and Olivia (Kerton group). We are so excited to have you join our team. We hope you enjoy your MUCEPs in our lab this semester.

Chris Kozak is a member of the NSERC Scholarships and Fellowships Selection Committee for Chemistry (Committee 179). He was also appointed to the editorial board of the International Journal of Molecular Sciences for the macromolecules section.

Fran Kerton is the Chair of the IUPAC ChemRAWN Committee. ChemRAWN is a standing committee for IUPAC, and aims to facilitate discussion on Chemical Research Applied to World Needs.

The Committee focuses on strategic activities in concert with the following six IUPAC goals:

1. Address global issues
2. Advance research through scientific discussion
3. Assist industry towards sustainable development, wealth creation, and improvement of the quality of life
4. Foster communication among chemists and organisations with special emphasis on needs in developing countries
5. Enhance education and the application of chemistry globally
6. Increase the diversity in IUPAC bodies

As part of her IUPAC work (Chair of Canadian National Committee for IUPAC), she has been involved with promoting the IUPAC Global Women’s Breakfast. This will take place on February 12th around the world and coincides with the United Nations Day of Women and Girls in Science

Our event at Memorial University will take place from 9.00-11.00 am on February 12th in C4019. Special thanks to Juliana, Silvana and Stephanie for all their hard work in organizing this.

Finally, Fran is excited to be a member of the general committee for the #RSCPoster 2020 twitter conference She is looking forward to interacting with scientists around the world and learning about their latest results on March 3, 2020. Don’t forget to register to submit your poster.

Our group’s first time using ChemRxiv to share a pre-print!

https://chemrxiv.org/articles/Liquid-Phase_Exfoliation_of_Biochars_in_Green_Solvents_and_Correlation_with_Solvent_Parameters/11571225?fbclid=IwAR0qARyFcXG6fezvMDangLN1ECF_aMugi4J4MeB_JX7QAUQAxkufkjXtz3U

Well done to Ju on all her hard work to obtain these results, make correlations, the collaborations and writing 🙂 #womeninscience #greenchemistry

Ju presenting some of this research at the ACS Green Chemistry & Sustainable Energy Summer School (2019)

In Summary: Hydrogen-bond accepting solvents can disperse (exfoliate) up to 75 wt% of oxidized biochar in 15 minutes. Due to lower functionality, lower levels of dispersion are achieved when LPE is performed on pristine biochar and the critical solvent parameter in this case is polarizability.

Image by 445693 from Pixabay

It is hard to believe that we are already 10 days into the new decade. In St. John’s, we have already had several winter storms and so the cityscape and countryside are looking beautiful!

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/cbcnl-photo-gallery-for-the-week-of-january-6-2020-1.5415552

We welcome Fatma from Jordan as a PhD student in the Kozak group. She will be looking at catalytic formation of some ‘green’ polymers.

We say ‘welcome back’ to Kori Andrea, who has returned from her study/research term at the University of Oxford with Prof. Weller (now at University of York). She has already co-authored a really cool paper on cobalt catalysis, which has been published in one of the first issues of ChemComm this year: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/cc/c9cc08864d#!divAbstract

Ju (Kerton group) has published an excellent review on the ACS Summer School on Green Chemistry and Sustainable Energy on the NESSE website. She definitely had a wonderful time in Colorado last year and does an excellent job on advising future applicants and attendees.

The Kozak group have just had a paper accepted by Dalton Transactions and it is available as an Accepted Manuscript on their website.

Wishing all our friends, collaborators,  and peers around the world the happiest of holidays. We have had a wonderful year and are looking forward to an amazing 2020 with more science, discoveries, adventures, and happiness. And of course, we are wishing for an uneventful move into the new Core Science Facility

Fran Kerton and Chris Kozak are visiting the University of the West Indies – St. Augustine (Trinidad and Tobago). Their host is Dr. Nigel Jalsa, Department of Chemistry. They have given departmental seminars and workshops on Green Chemistry, and working with students and faculty on future collaborations and proposals.

The traditional post-defense photo for Dr. Hart Plommer – thank you to the Chair and Examiners, and Dr. Katz for standing in for Dr. Kerton while she was travelling

Congratulations to Dr. Hart Plommer who successfully defended his thesis and convocated in absentia (alongside Dr. George Margoutidis). We were delighted to watch Dr. Kenson Ambrose and Dr. Jennifer Murphy cross the stage and receive their doctorate degrees earlier this week. Congrats again to them all.

Juliana (Ju) Vidal (PhD candidate, Kerton group) was elected to the exec of NESSE (Network of Early-Career Sustainable Scientists and Engineers). She contributed another fantastic blog post to the School of Graduate Studies blog in which she reflected on her first two years at MUN. She also had an editorial piece published in the ACCN (Chemical institute of Canada’s news magazine) on science communication. Finally, Ju is  volunteering with the wonderful organization Beyond Benign to help with their communications and social media activities.

Ju presenting her research

Courtney’s M.Sc. thesis was successfully examined and she received a Hebron Teaching Fellowship for her future studies in education. Her convocation was this past week. Congrats Courtney!

Kori Andrea (Vanier Scholar, Michael Smith Study Supplement Holder) was awarded a poster prize at the Dalton Younger Members Event in Cardiff. Kori is currently spending 6 months with the Weller Group at Oxford University.

Kori and Hart’s review was published and is free (open access) until October 26 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001430571931523X?dgcid=author)

Dr. Kerton’s photo has been added to the ‘dude wall’ in the department of chemistry and so she will keep Dr. Dawe company (Louise Dawe’s photo is mentioned in this C&EN article https://cen.acs.org/careers/diversity/Chemists-grapple-lack-diversity-displayed/97/i37?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=CEN). Thank you Dr. Rowley!

Dr.s Kerton and Kozak visited Khon Kaen University to participate in the Thailand International Symposium on Green Chemistry, Sustainable Materials and Fuels. Dr. Kerton gave a keynote lecture and Dr. Kozak an invited lecture. We also discussed future collaborations and student exchanges with the Faculty of Science and Faculty of Engineering….so watch this space.

They also gave four invited lectures at different Universities in Japan: Nagoya, http://www.itbm.nagoya-u.ac.jp/gtr/uploads/7511f8e803e0bf792bd993385d4044f259b7ca4e.pdf, Tokyo http://www.chembio.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/data/lec1910.pdf, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology https://t.co/RzZlc5913b?amp=1, and Kyoto, es.kuicr.kyoto-u.ac.jp/index_en.html. One particular outcome of this trip is the potential for collaborations and exchanges with the University of Kyoto (Institute for Chemical Research).

Dinner with colleagues from Nagoya University

Tour of a sake brewery with Prof. Masafumi Hirano (Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology)

Dr.s Kerton and Kozak with Prof. Kyoko Nozaki and their gift of a photo of the Newfoundland coast

At the Institute for Chemical Research (Uji Campus, Kyoto University), exploring Uji and dinner with Prof. Nakamura

Dinner with colleagues from the Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University

To group members, please let us know if we have forgotten anything! It has been a very busy couple of months.

Lots of milestones were passed and hoops jumped through 🙂

Keegan Start (MSc candidate, Kozak group) and Tim Anderson (PhD candidate, Kozak group) gave their departmental seminars.

Dr. Nelaine Mora-Diez (Thompson Rivers University, BC) was awarded the Anderson Award Lecture and on the same day Tim Anderson received his graduate teaching award for his dedicated teaching in Chem 3211 (Inorganic Chemistry).

Courtney Laprise (M.Sc., co-supervised by Kerton and Kozak) successfully completed her degree and will be pursuing a degree in Education next year.

Dr. Jennifer Murphy (co-supervised by Kerton and Hawboldt) successfully defended her doctorate degree, and Hart Plommer submitted his thesis for examination. Dr. Murphy is moving to Ontario to start a position at Windsor University as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Nick Vukotic

Both groups had several papers accepted/published:

K. A. Andrea, H. Plommer and F. M. Kerton*, “Ring-Opening Polymerizations and Copolymerizations of Epoxides Using Aluminum- and Boron-Centered Catalysts”, European Polymer Journal, 2019, In Press, Special Issue on Ring-Opening Polymerization, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eurpolymj.2019.08.029

K. A. Andrea, and F. M. Kerton*, “Functionalized Polycarbonates via Triphenylborane Catalyzed Polymerization-Hydrosilylation” RSC Advances, 2019, 9, 26542 – 26546, DOI: 10.1039/c9ra05947d  OPEN ACCESS

K. A. Andrea, E. D. Butler, T. R. Brown, T. S. Anderson, D. Jagota, C. Rose, E. M. Lee, S. D. Goulding, J. N. Murphy, F. M. Kerton* and C. M. Kozak*, “Iron Complexes for Cyclic and Polycarbonate Formation: Selectivity Control from Ligand Design and Metal-Center Geometry” Inorganic Chemistry, 2019, 58, 11231−11240.

Y. Liu, L. N. Dawe and C. M. Kozak*, “Bimetallic and Trimetallic Zinc Amino-bis(phenolate) Complexes for Ring-opening Polymerization of rac-Lactide” Dalton Trans. 2019, Accepted, In Press.

….and there are several more under-revision, under review or about to be submitted. So keep an eye on our publication list and blog for more news!

It has been a very busy month – congratulations to all on their achievements.