Our next webinar will take place via the internet on Tuesday June 22nd at 8PM EDT/1AM GMT. Sign up on our mailing list to receive the Zoom link!
We hope to see/hear from you all at one of our sessions or as one of the next speakers. If you are an early career scientist and would like to present your research, don't hesitate to submit an abstract today! For now, please learn more about our current speakers and their research below. We also thank the generous support from Cell Reports Physical Science and the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Our featured speakers this week are Noah Bartfield (graduate student, Yale University, USA), and Dr. Miguel Soto (postdoctoral researcher, University of British Columbia, Canada). The seminar will be guest-moderated by Prof. Justin Caram from UCLA.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKERS AND THEIR TALKS BELOW
NOAH BARTFIELD (on Twitter @NaOHBartfield)
Biography: Noah Bartfield is a graduate of Florida State University with a B.S. in Biochemistry and minors in Biological Sciences and Mathematics. As an undergraduate, he participated in research under Professor Jim Frederich investigating structural modifications of natural products and a titanacyclobutane-mediated method for alkene hydromethylation. Noah also participated in an NSF REU at Scripps Research studying chemical editing of proteoglycan architecture under Professor Mia Huang. Noah will soon begin a Ph.D. in complex molecule synthesis at Yale University, with hopes to become the principal investigator of a research laboratory at the interface of complex molecule synthesis and chemical biology.
Title of Talk: Site‐Specific Alkene Hydromethylation via Protonolysis of Titanacyclobutanes
Abstract: All-carbon quaternary centers and methyl functionalities are fundamental to natural and pharmaceutical products. Despite their wide presence, few methods to date have been developed to insert methyl groups directly across alkenes. Of the available methods, many present limitations in regioselectivity, chemoselectivity, site-specificity, or length of synthetic route. Herein, we report a novel method for direct, site-specific Markovnikov-like hydromethylation of olefins. Using Tebbe’s reagent as a protected titanium methylidene, introduction of Lewis basic solvent unveils the reactive methylidene capable of forming titanacyclobutanes with free olefins. In situ protonolysis results in net reduction of the olefin and furnishment with a methyl group whose selectivity is subject to steric, thermodynamic, and chelation effects. In the current generation, this method has shown promise in mono- and disubstituted olefins in the presence of amides, carbamates, ethers, alcohols, pyridines, and basic amines. The net hydromethylation is effective on exo- and endocyclic olefins as well as α- and 1,1-disubstituted acyclic olefins with a compelling regioselectivity toward methylation at the more substituted or sterically congested carbon. In this study we established reactivity order for various alkene substitution patterns and four models for site-specific hydromethylation of complex molecules.
DR MIGUEL SOTO (on Twitter @Miguel_A_Soto)
Biography: Miguel was born and raised in a small fireworks village located just outside Mexico City. In 2010, he completed his bachelor’s degree (Industrial Chemistry) at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM, Mexico City). Soon after that, he started his graduate studies at Cinvestav (Mexico) under the supervision of Dr. Jorge Tiburcio. Since 2017, Miguel has been a postdoc in the MacLachlan group, at the University of British Columbia (UBC, Canada), where he designs and constructs exotic molecules and supramolecular materials.
Title of Talk: Crown Ethers Meet the King (Platinum)
Abstract: Molecular emitters, either organic or metal-organic, are valuable elements for a range of applications and technologies, e.g. as components in displays, dyes, and biocompatible targets. When designing an emitter, there are three characteristics that are highly desirable to adjust: their emitted color, emission decay, and luminescent quantum yield. For most metal-organic emitters, these features are adjusted through a judicious selection of a metal core and by the covalent modification of a ligand; this means that only one emitter can be obtained for each ligand/metal set. In this talk, I will discuss some of the supramolecular tools (metallophilic interactions, ion recognition, hierarchical self-assembly, etc.) that we use to reversibly control luminescent and chromic properties in cyclometalated platinum(II) complexes.
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