A series of short talks by undergraduates about their summer research projects provided the audience with an exposure to various fields in chemistry including catalysis, materials science and organic synthesis. The session ignited curiosity among the participants which was reflected in the Q&A session.

Pincer complexes from the first row transition metals have grabbed a lot of eyeballs recently. Owing to their enormous catalytic potential, and low toxicity, these complexes the baton-bearers of green chemistry tomorrow. 

Expounding on these exotic compounds, Sourajit's talk delineated the advantages of these earth-abundant catalysts for hydrogenation and de-hydrogenation  reactions. 

This discourse discussed how benzyne, a reactive intermediate, became a tool in modern synthetic chemistry. The different methods of generating benzynes and their isolation was explored. A mechanistic approach was taken to understand the reactivity exhibited by benzyne. Finally, Devendra illustrated examples reactions of benzyne from total synthesis of natural products and pericyclic chemistry.

The field of chemical biology, where biology meets various tools used in chemistry, the talk described one such important tool - bioorthogonal chemistry, which refers to introducing certain chemicals to biological systems that react without interfering with biological reactions. The applications ranging from imaging to anti-tumor activity were explained.

Richa Rashmi (Int. M.Sc. Batch 2016)

PhD at University of California, San Diego

19 December, 2023

Subhashree discussed the development of some novel chemical motifs- masked acylating agents, that generate reactive electrophilic species in the presence of an enzyme. These electrophilic species are further employed to understand the spatial organization of biomolecules in cells. The talk focused on the interdisciplinary approach of designing special chemical probes to understand cellular biology.

Mitradip talked about the idea of equilibration in protein dynamics. He also discussed the hypothesis that RCs for protein dynamics converge before equilibrium has been achieved. I will present a metric, Mode evolution Metric (MeM), which was designed to track the changes of RCs with simulation length. Lastly, he also demonstrated the application of MeM in identification of converged RCs in a model PES.