Alice Reznickova '10 makes headlines in the June issue of the The Iotan, the publication of Iota Sigma Pi. Alice was awarded the Gladys Emerson Scholarship by the Society.

Kevin Shea was awarded a PRF grant administered by the American Chemical Society. Organic chemistry rocks.

Teresa Jacques '06 was one of three winners of the American Chemical Society's Legends of Legacy Archives Contest. Details are available here . Congratulations to Teresa.

A paper on the role of etching in the oxidation of hydrogen-terminated silicon in aqueous solution has been published by Margaret Kulkarni, Sara Green, Caitlyn Shea, and Kate Queeney. See the Journal of Physical Chemistry C 2009, 113, 10206-10214.

Kristi Closser, Miriam Quintal, and Kevin Shea have just published a paper on the scope and limitations of the intramolecular Nicholas and Pauson-Khand Reaction in J. Org. Chem., available here

Kevin Shea has been awarded a Faculty Travel Grant to attend the National Organic Chemistry Symposium in Boulder, CO, in June.

Rachel Dorset '10 has been selected to receive an Undergraduate Student Travel Award from the Division of Organic Chemistry of the ACS to attend the National Organic Chemistry Symposium in Boulder, CO, in June. Good work, Rachel.

Kristi Closser '07, currently studying at UC Berkeley, has just been awarded an NSF fellowship. Great job, Kristi.

An issue in the development of biorenewable feedstocks, especially those containing lignocellulose, is the cleavage of these structures. Since lignins are extensively hydroxylated, methods to break the C-C bond in alpha diols becomes important part of the digestion process for lignins. Hanson and co-workers report that the dipicolinate complexes of vanadium(V) and vanadium(IV) are effective in carrying out this clevage. They react dipicolinate complex of V(V), V(dipic)O(OEt) with pinacol (2,3-dimethylbutane-2,3-diol) to form a complex with the pinacol. Placing this material in pyridine generated, over 4-6 days, one mole of acetone and the green V(IV) complex, V(dipic)O(py)₂, along with half a mole of unreacted pinacol. Heating this solution for 2 days caused further reaction of the unreacted pinacol, yielding conversion to acetone and producing a purple μ-oxydivanadium(III) complex. Since both the V(IV) and V(III) complexes are sensitive to oxidation by air, these process offer the possibility of catalytic processes that will cleave carbon-carbon bonds in lignins. See J. Amer. Chem. Soc., 2009, 131, 428-429.