The Tonks Group has 2 new reports out on catalytic reactions with Ti, both "firsts" of their kind! First, Kate reports on a new cascading "interrupted" hydroamination reaction; and second, Steven reveals a unique example of transfer-hydrogenation coupled nitrene transfer!
It was a busy month in the Tonks group with 2 freshly-minted PhDs! Congrats to Dr. Kate Rynders and Dr. Rachel Rapgnani, who both defended in August! Kate is off to a career in patent law and Rachel has moved down the road to work as a scientist at HB Fuller. Congrats both!
Ian was invited to present at IACS in Kolkata on 11 July and also at the 'Emerging Trends in Organometallics and Catalysis' at IISER Kolkata 12-13 July.
Ian is also presenting at the 30th International Conference on Organometallic Chemistry held in Agra, India 14-18 July.
Rachel R presented her work on polymers derived from CO2 and butadiene at the 'Polymer Woman Empowerment and Research' Conference held in Chicago!
Partha presented his work on 'Ti-Catalyzed 1,2-Dihydroamination of Alkynes' at the Organometallic Chemistry GRC held in Rode Island!
The Tonks Group has 2 new reports out on the chemistry of EtVP, our CO2-derived lactone. First, Rachel R (in collaboration with the Zhukhovitskiy group at UNC-Chapel Hill) discovered some exciting Pd-catalyzed [3,3]-sigmatropic oxo rearrangements that result in polymer skeletal edits, while Ryan took a deep-dive into copolymerizations of EtVP with other lactones, demonstrating broad compatibility for making block, gradient, and random copolymers! Way to go team!
The start of the summer term has brought four new researchers to the Tonks Lab: Alex Cartolano has joined as a "zero-year" PhD student; Ollie Clarke and Audrey Surdell have joined as NSF CSP Summer Undergraduates, and Alex Sell has joined as an NSF-REU/LANDO Summer Undergraduate! Ollie will be working with Arron and Rachel R; Audrey with Ryan and Madhur; and Alex S with Partha and Jaekwan. It's a busy time in the lab!
Jaekwan presented his work on the role of titanium catalysts for the synthesis of aluminum nanoparticles at the Inorganic Chemistry GRC held in Rode Island!
Team Tonks 'Schlenk bombs' are hoping to become back-to-back Chemistry Summer Softball Champions!
Both Rachel R and Arron presented their work at the Minnesota/3M poster session. Rachel R showcased her CO2-based lactone synthesise and polymerization and how we can edit polymer architecture through rearrangement chemistries. Arron highlighted how to achieve high molar mass CO2 based polyesters and their applications as both adhesives and elastomers!
Yukun's study revising the mechanism of N-N coupling with Ti has been published in Dalton Transactions! This is Yukun's 9th paper with the Tonks Group--will there be more??
Well done to Xavier Murray for successfully completing his Undergraduate Honors Thesis on his work in the group titled 'Ti-Mediated Synthesis of 1,2-dihydropyrimidines'
Our studies into using solid-state 15N NMR to predict M=NR reactivity, in collaboration with the Copéret Group at ETH, has been published in JACS! Partha led the UMN side of this collaboration, synthesizing a variety of 15N-labelled metal imido complexes.
Welcome to our latest visiting student Takuya Akiyama from the Mashima Group in Osaka University. We hope you will enjoy your time here working on polymerization catalysis
The group has published a new Chem. Rev. summarizing their work on CO2-derived lactone polymerization.
The group has published a new Inorg. Chem. paper, demonstrating the advantages of using W to catalyze our [2+2+1] pyrrole reaction. This project was led by our collaborators in Osaka, Kazushi Mashima and Hayato Tsurugi, with first author Takuya Akiyama--who will be joining the Tonks Group for a research stay this summer!
Ian, Arron, and Rachel R spent 2.5 weeks in Sydney and Melbourne as part of the NSF CSP and CSIRO sponsored PELICANS program, where we learned about recycling and the circular economy around plastic packaging in Australia.
Congratulations Zoe Fish for passing your OPE! Officially a PhD Candidate!
Congratulations to Dr. Shao-Yu Lo on passing his viva examination
Welcome to our newest PhD recruits Alison, Madhur and Aiswarya on joining the team!
Well done to Janaya and Ryan on their latest work published in ACS Catal. on hydroesterificative polymerization of 10-Undecen-1-ol