Robert B. Grossman
Professor of Chemistry
|
https://www.as.uky.edu/map-directions
The University of Kentucky's College of Arts and Sciences is located in Kentucky's scenic Bluegrass region, only a few minutes from downtown Lexington. The college is housed in 21 buildings and is home to more than 5,800 undergraduate and graduate students and over 500 faculty and staff College of Arts & Sciences 202 Patterson Office Tower Lexington, KY 40506-0027 Phone: 859-257-8354 In collaboration with the Atwood group, we are preparing a series of simple S containing compounds to coordinate to Hg and to precipitate it from solution. An REU student would prepare such a compound and see how effective it is as a Hg precipitator.
I have found that undergraduates
learn the most when they can begin with a known synthetic sequence and
then follow it up with novel reactions. They gain
|
|
experience and confidence when they prepare a known compound and can compare their results with those reported in the literature. They then experience the joys and frustrations of research at the frontiers of knowledge when they carry out reactions whose outcomes are less certain, and they have to identify both conditions that lead to single products and the identities of those products. For these reasons, the project I have described above is perfect for an REU experience. |
Further details of Dr. Grossman's work are given on the Chemistry website.
Office: 339 Chemistry-Physics Building
Phone: (859) 257-1285
FAX: (859) 323-1069
Email: robert.grossman@uky.edu
1987 A.B., Princeton University
Advisor: Robert A. Pascal, Jr.
1992 Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Advisor: Stephen L. Buchwald
1992-1994 NATO-NSF Post-doctoral Fellow, Cambridge University
Advisor: Steven V. Ley
Postdoctoral Fellowships available for qualified applicants (US citizens only). The Art of Writing Reasonable Organic Reaction Mechanisms, 2nd edition.New! Web-based, interactive mechanism problems from the textbook!I teach a two-day "short course" based on this book that is intended for BS- and MS-level chemists in the pharmaceutical and contract synthesis industries. Please contact me if you are interested in bringing me to your company's site to teach the course. Our group develops new synthetic methods and applies them to the synthesis of natural products and biologically relevant compounds. Students learn skills that prepare them for employment in the pharmaceutical and contract synthesis industries. Research Project 1: Double AnnulationOur group has discovered a suite of reactions we call the double annulation route to fused bicyclic compounds. In the first step of the double annulation, two good carbon acids connected by a tether and an ethynyl ketone undergo a double Michael reaction to give a carbocyclic or heterocyclic compound in what is formally an [n + 1] annulation.Research Project 2: Polycyclic, Polyprenylated AcylphloroglucinolsWe have recently begun a new program aimed at the synthesis of the polycyclic, polyprenylated acylphloroglucinols (PPAPs), a large group of natural products with fascinating chemical structures and biological activities. For example, hyperforin is thought to be the bioactive constituent in St. John's wort, an herbal remedy for depression. Garsubellin A has properties that make it a potential lead in the search for drugs to treat Alzheimer's disease. Xanthochymol prevents microtubule depolymerization, a property it shares with the anticancer drug Taxol. We are exploring both biomimetic and nonbiomimetic routes to these and other PPAPs.Research Project 3: Loline BiosynthesisWe are elucidating the biosynthetic route to loline, a naturally occurring insecticide that is produced by fungi that live between the cell walls of certain grasses. Our role is to synthesize isotopically labelled putative biosynthetic intermediates. These compounds are fed to the fungi, and the loline that they produce is isolated and checked for isotopic enrichment. This project is being carried out in collaboration with Profs. Chris Schardl and Lowell Bush in the College of Agriculture. We are also exploring new total synthetic routes to loline.Education Project: Web-Based Interactive Organic Chemistry HomeworkIn collaboration with Prof. Raphael A. Finkel of the Department of Computer Science, we have developed a Web-based interactive organic chemistry homework program, ACE Organic. In the typical organic chemistry course, students are assigned questions out of a textbook for which a solutions manual is available. Students struggle with a question for a few minutes, look up the answer, and then feel as if they understand how to answer the question themselves. A computer program that can tell students that their responses are incorrect without giving away the correct answer is likely to be a more effective teaching tool.Many Web-based chemistry homework programs already exist, but ACE Organic has features that, to our knowledge, are not present in combination in any other homework program:
Funding:We are grateful to the following organizations for funding our research:
Publication list.Graduate studies in the UK Department of Chemistry.Other useful and interesting chemistry-related sites:
Personal:
amcrasto@gmail.com http://newdrugapprovals.org/
DRUG APPROVALS BY DR ANTHONY MELVIN CRASTO
DRUG APPROVALS BY DR ANTHONY MELVIN CRASTO .....FOR BLOG HOME CLICK HERE |