Graduate Students

Melissa King recently defended her Ph.D. dissertation and will be receiving her degree at commencement this May. Melissa joined the Department of Chemistry at Wesleyan in 2014 after having received her B.S. in chemistry from Central Connecticut State University. At CCSU Melissa worked on the synthesis of chiral diols for the separation of racemic mixtures with Dr. Neil Glagovich. Upon coming to Wesleyan, Melissa joined the lab of Prof. Michelle Personick where she changed her research focus from the total synthesis of small organic molecules to the synthesis of inorganic nanocatalysts. Melissa has spent her time at Wesleyan studying the mechanisms of shape control in the growth of bimetallic nanoparticles and their subsequent relevance as catalytic materials. After graduating, Melissa will be joining the lab of Prof. Michael Ross in the Chemistry Department at the University of Massachusetts Lowell where she will apply her experimental expertise and strong fundamental understanding of tailorable nanomaterials to the study and development of sustainable photocatalytic materials.

Dr. Melissa King delivers her Open Ph.D. Defense to faculty, friends, and family

Pictured left to right: Dr. Joy Cote, Dr. Melissa King & her children, and Dr. Dan Obenchain

Dr. Melissa King

Dr. King’s Periodic Table Cake

Terry Emmons and Dr. Andrea Roberts

Pictured left to right: Sean McDarby, Joshua Signore, Jozafina Milicaj, Bakar Hassan, and Jeffrey Keyes

Pictured left to right: Dr. Michelle Personick, Dr. Dan Obenchain, Yoanna Throssell, Vasileios Drogkaris, and Dr. Anthony Davis

Giselle Reyes:

Giselle graduated in December 2017, having completed the graduation requirements in seven semesters. At that point she had already applied and been admitted to the B.A./M.A. program and had been working in my laboratory for two years, including two summers. Giselle’s research was a study of the electrochemical cleavage in acetonitrile of benzylic carbon-oxygen bonds, primarily those of benzhydrol and substituted benzhydrols but also simpler benzyl alcohols, taking advantage of the very negative potentials attainable in platinum cathodes in aprotic solvents. The reductions of benzhydrols were found to afford diphenylmethanes in high yield under these conditions. She then turned her attention to the same reductions carried out in perdeuterio acetonitrile (CD3CN). It was anticipated that reduction of the benzhydryl C-OH bond would produce benzhydryl carbanion, which would then abstract a deuteron from the solvent to afford the monodeuterio product (C6H5)2CHD. Surprisingly, the reactions were found by carbon and proton NMR spectroscopy to afford not only the expected monodeuterio product (C6H5)2CHD) but also substantial amounts of the dideuterio and diprotio isotopomers C6H5)2CD2 and (C6H5)2CH2, demonstrating the reversibility of proton transfer from acetonitrile to benzhydryl carbanion. Giselle successfully defended her thesis on December 19, 2018.

Zackary Hillman:

In Spring 2017, Zach received Honors for his senior thesis describing his research in my laboratory. He then applied and was admitted to the BA/MA program to continue his research on the reductive dimerization (Zn/AlCl3) of alkyl aryl ketones (C6H5COR) to 1,2-dialkyl-1-alkanones (C6H5)2CHRCOR) and reaction of the latter with superoxide ion, a reaction previously studied by Elaine Tsui of my group (now a graduate student at Princeton University). Our original work on this reaction had been limited to dimeric ketones in which both alkyl groups are the same. However, Zach showed that mixed dimers can be synthesized by using mixtures of two different ketones in the reductive dimerization step. An exciting development in the course of this work was his discovery that the reductive dimerization of cyclohexyl phenyl ketone affords a dicyclohexyl ketone in which ring inversion of one of the cyclohexyl groups is highly sterically constrained, i.e., that the ring is conformationally rigid, as confirmed by x-ray crystallography, variable temperature NMR spectroscopy, and quantum chemical computations. His thesis was defended successfully on December 21, 2018.

Summaries written by Professor Albert Fry

Dr. Prachiti Bhatawdekar successfully defended her PhD thesis, “Conservation of Enantiomeric Excess Throughout a Multistep Reduction / Elimination Reaction Sequence Starting with an Interrupted Feist-Bénary Product”, on November 30, 2018. Prachiti came to Wesleyan in 2011 after receiving her combined Master’s/Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from  Jiwaji University in India. Prachiti joined Prof. Calter’s lab in the fall of 2011 and worked on a number of projects before settling on a methodological study. She discovered the Interrupted Feist-Bénary products commonly produced in the Calter labs could be reduced to useful benopyran derivatives. Prachiti is now completing an industrial post-doc at CheminPharma in Branford, CT.