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William Miles, associate professor of chemistry, recently gave a presentation at the 223rd National American Chemical Society meeting in Orlando, Fla., sharing research he conducted with five Lafayette students.
Titled “Oxa-Pictet-Spengler Reaction of 1-(3-Furyl)-2-alkanols,” the poster was based on a paper co-authored by Miles and Susan Heinsohn ’03, a chemistry major from Mount Bethel, Pa.; Megan Brennan ’02, a chemistry major from Barnegat, N.J.; Daniel Swarr ’03, a double major in physics and mathematics from Clifton Park, N.Y.; Patrick M. Eidam ’01, and Kathy A. Gelato ’01. It also has been accepted for publication in the journal Synthesis.
“Kathy discovered this reaction late in the summer of 1999 when she was working for me under the EXCEL Scholars program,” says Miles. “Dan continued the work on this project, uncovering very high selectivity for the formation of only one of the two possible 3-D forms of the product. This very exciting finding was fleshed out and optimized by Megan and Susan during the summer of 2000 and 2001, respectively. Patrick (as well as Susan) began the very ambitious and long-term research plan of using these compounds as a starting material for the synthesis of important pharmaceuticals.”
Gelato is a graduate student at the University of California-Davis and Eidam is pursuing a Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Virginia. Brennan will pursue an advanced degree in synthetic organic chemistry at Stanford University later this year. Swarr is a Goldwater Scholarship recipient. Both he and Heinsohn have conducted research with faculty as EXCEL Scholars.