Long national nightmare ending?

We were pleased to have Tim Cernak yesterday for the annual G. Ron Brown lecture. Always great to host a former student.

And thanks to Sophie Rousseaux (U of T) for being the external examiner on Anthony's thesis.

Congrats to Anthony Izzotti on a successful thesis defence. Amazing work on cyclopropane expansions, conformational effects of spirocyclopropane-cyclohexanes and once and for all proving that the [14+2] cycloaddition of heptafulvalene is not a Woodward-Hoffman controlled process.

This looks like a disaster for US University funding.

Cyclopropyl effect causes substituents on cyclohexane to favour axial conformation 'Unusual stereocontrol element' will help medicinal chemists increase three-dimensionality of drug candidates

A nice write-up of our recent work on the axial-promoting effect of cyclopropanes.

www.chemistryworld.com/news/cyclopr...

For our first Blue Sky post: Our paper on the surprising effect of cyclopropanes on A-values is now out (in preliminary form) in Chem. Sci. If you want to push a large or electronegative group axial on a ring, just stick a cyclopropane next to it.

pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...