Our latest collaboration with Pfizer, Inc. and the Liu group at the University of Pittsburgh describing the copper-catalyzed hydroboration of benzylidenecyclobutanes (BCBs) and related four-membered ring compounds has been accepted for publication in ACS Catalysis. Key to the success of this method was the identification of a modified 1,2-bis(diphenylphosphino)benzene (dppbz) ligand that enhances reactivity through π-stacking interactions with the substrate, as elucidated by density functional theory (DFT). Congrats to Taeho and Kane from our lab, ‪Tuğçe from the Liu lab at Pittsburgh, and Gary, Alex, Sajiv, Ryan, Ru, Scott, and Indra from Pfizer. Special props to high-school senior Kane for co-authoring his second paper!

For a link to the paper, click here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscatal.0c03622

This work was first described back in August: https://chemrxiv.org/articles/preprint/Multifaceted_Substrate_Ligand_Interactions_Promote_the_Copper-Catalyzed_Hydroboration_of_Benzylidenecyclobutanes_and_Related_Compounds/12788390

Stop us from volunteering with the awesome middle school scientists at Barrio Logan College Institute that is!

We had the honor of leading bath bomb kinetics, where each student made a bath bomb with different amounts of ingredients and measured how that affected the rate of fizzing! With a little trial and error, these junior scientists were bath bomb pros in no time!

We adapted to social distancing requirements and delivered personalized science kits to each kid so they could do the experiment from home over Zoom at no cost!

This was our first virtual demo and it was a blast! We can’t wait for the next one.

In collaboration with Boehringer-Ingelheim (BI), we describe a method for palladium-catalyzed regio- and stereoselective cross-coupling of terminal alkynes with internal alkynes bearing various proximal directing groups. The transformation is enabled by a tailored P,N-ligand that was previously developed at BI for applications in asymmetric catalysis. Congrats to project lead, Mingyu, who started the project during an internship at BI, and to other co-workers from Scripps (Tianhua, Omar, and Rei) and BI (Carl, Bo, Dan, Olga, Chris, and Jeff)!

For a link to the pre-print, click here: https://chemrxiv.org/articles/preprint/Atom-Economical_Cross-Coupling_of_Internal_and_Terminal_Alkynes_to_Access_1_3-Enynes/13083419