A group of 16 organic chemistry research students and their faculty mentors, Professors Ian Rosenstein, Max Majireck and Robin Kinnel, traveled to Colgate University to participate in the annual Summer Organic Research Symposium on July 1. Now officially referred to as SmORS, the meeting began in the 1990s as a program between Hamilton and Colgate and was called CHOG (Colgate-Hamilton Organic Group). Recently Hobart and William Smith students began participating, which necessitated a name change for the conference. The conference has rotating venues, and next year will be at Hamilton.
Hamilton student participants included: Grace Williams-DuHamel ’15, Jed Kass’16, John DeGuardi ’16 and Allie Eckert ’15, from the Rosenstein lab; Zach Klein’15, Bryce Timm ’15, Ashton Lowenstein ’17 and Micheal Carducci’17 from the Kinnel lab; and Esther Cleary ’15, Alex Kaplan ’16, Ben Schafer’17, Ben Wesley ’16, Chris Williams ’17, John Bennett ’16, Yingbin Mei ’16 and Hannah Ferris ’16, all from the Majireck lab.
A total of 26 students presented work on topics as varied as studying catalysts ultimately geared to managing hydrogen storage, examining conditions for utilizing radical chemistry in construction of challenging carbocyclic ring systems, the stereoselective preparation and biological evaluation of several peptide compounds related to promising anticancer natural products, and developing new and efficient ways for preparing “drug-like” nitrogenous rings that can be used as tool compounds to study human disease biology.
Prior to the symposium itself, the students and faculty convened for a pizza lunch and a chance to get acquainted, and afterward the group enjoyed a dinner of catered Indian food. Most then returned to the auditorium again to watch the end of the Belgium-U.S. soccer game on the projector screen.
