Students take Action in the Gulf
This past Labor Day weekend, five chemistry students accompanied Professor Larsen on a tour of the coastlines of Mississippi and Louisiana to learn more about the effects of the BP oil spill. They brought back samples of the beach sand and water to study back at St. Mary's and to further their understanding of the many environmental issues facing the gulf.
Chem majors in San Francisco
From left to right: Brian, JP, Dr. Leah Eller, Rob, Nick, Danielle, Mike, Bertrand, Anita, Janice, Dr. Andy Koch, Tabitha (Now Dr. Clem), and Taylor. Emilie and Kristina couldn't make the photo.
Last Spring, 12 St. Mary's students attended the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Fransico. Eight presented their work and we all met after Tabitha Clem's ('05) talk. Tabitha was just finishing up her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley.
"Pyridinium Substitution of Electron Acceptors: Photoinduced Energy Harvesting"
Chris worked on two parallel projects 1) the stepwise Suzuki coupling reaction of chloropyridiniumanthraquinones with 1,4-benzenediboronic acid, and 2) the preparation of ?-perpyridiniumporphyrins as catalysts in hydrogen gas evolution. The first part of this project was designed to demonstrate that the cross-coupling reaction is an efficient means to incorporate an electron-deficient anthraquinone ring into a wide range of molecular systems. These rings are of interest due to their ability to accept electrons at a potential close to 1,4-benzoquinone, Mother Nature's ubiquitous electron acceptor. The second part of his project dealt with the preparation of water-soluble electron-deficient porphyrins as catalysts in solar energy harvesting.
