SWOSU Day 24: Different Chemists, Different Perspectives (+ Duke’s Diner bonus content!!)

For today’s blog, rather than repeat the constants of daily life which my cohort have already explained very well, I’m going to share a few of the most interesting things I’ve learned from my experience at SSP. Since we had a guest speaker today, I want to talk about how the different guest speakers we’ve hosted have helped me consider what kind of future I might want to take in chemistry.

Dr. Mao established a new process for coating objects, notably semiconductors, in a thin polymer which she could modify to give specific properties, like hydrophobicity. Dr. Fortune loved chemistry more than anyone I’ve ever talked to; he thought about life as a beautiful “dance of the electrons”, and his PhD research showed that it was possible to synthesize certain natural organic compounds (with selective stereochemistry) by working in the completely opposite direction as the established method. Finally, Dr. Lamar presented to us today about his visible-light catalyzed reactions. Dr. Lamar championed accessibility in research; he made sure all of his synthesis reactions were possible with relatively cheap compounds and could be achieved in just a few hours under cheap LEDs from ebay and in the presence of air.

I found Dr. Lamar’s work the most interesting because of how different it was to our own
research at SSP SynthChem. Our reactions take more expensive reagents and catalysts, as well as nitrogen lines to ensure no oxygen reactivity, but Dr. Lamar wanted anyone with basic lab access to be able to experiment with what he discovered. And what he found was also very cool: easier ways to chlorinate (like for pool water) and a new class of compounds, sulfonamides, that are effective at tiny concentrations (like 0.008 µM!) for killing pancreatic cancer cells. Alongside his philosophy of accessibility, he also said that by choosing a somewhat niche topic (visible-light catalyzed reactions), it ensured that not too many other people in the world were doing competing research. I was talking with Dr. Hubin at dinner today, and he jokingly mentioned that another way to make sure your research is unique is to make your synthesis reactions hard to do properly (like a lot of his complicated macrocycles).

Anyway, that brings me to what I learned from all of this: synthetic chemists generally like to stay in their area of expertise (like Dr. Hubin with his tetraazamacrocycles and Dr. Mao with her polymer films). Also, it’s usually easier to deal with compounds that don’t have a biological application. Dr. Mao had a clear-cut avenue for her research from the get-go in manufacturing technology. On the other hand, when Dr. Hubin and Dr. Lamar made compounds with anticancer properties, they both had trouble getting other people interested enough to start in vivo experiments at both the animal and human trial stages. Synthesizing drug compounds seems like it can be thankless work, no matter how promising the compound, so I’m not sure if pharmaceuticals is the route I would like to take. If I go into chemistry, I think I would enjoy environmental field work, since I’ve found the analysis portions of our work very cool. But, I’ve also learned that not everyone knows exactly what they want to be until late in their career. Dr. Fortune didn’t decide to become a synthetic organic chemist until he applied for graduate school; before that he had been on track to become a doctor to please his parents. Dr. Lamar didn’t decide that he wanted to be a synthetic chemist over being a sculptor or preserving ancient art until his junior year of college. In any case, I think the experience at SSP, especially getting to hear from so many guest speakers, has given me a little bit of a leg up on that decision.

Okay, now that I’m done with the reflection-y stuff, here are some cool pictures from today (and
one extra Duke’s Diner feature):

Duke’s Diner Tier List … dun dun duuuun!
S – Seasoned Fries (waffle cut!), Nachos (aka “Taco Pile Up” – love the refried beans 🫘),
Guacamole (homemade and chunky!)
A – Chicken Enchilada Casserole (Tex-Mex style), Baked Ziti, Sweet Chili Chicken, Salisbury
Steak (mushroom gravy carries 󰺽), King Ranch Chicken (cheesy chicken and potatoes!)
B – BBQ Chicken Sandwiches, Mashed Potatoes (Oklahoma staple), Pork Roast,
Sicilian/Normandy/Florentine Vegetables (aka frozen veggie mix 🥦🥕)
C – Chicken Tenders, Lemon Pepper Wings (salt bombs), Quesadillas (American cheese 󰣻),
D – Meatloaf (dry), Green Beans (sour and briny), White Gravy (imo not real gravy 🙅)
F – Chicken Fried Steak, Burritos (deep fried, very greasy), Ham (gray spots 🤨)

Okay, that’s it for today. Thanks for reading my blog, and stay tuned for a dessert tier list by
Danny!

Gavin

Hi, I’m Gavin from Albuquerque, New Mexico. I love to play harpsichord, violin, and viola! You can probably guess that Baroque and Mariachi are my favorite music genres. So far, my favorite experiences at SSP have been: challenging myself with QotD, listening to Dr. Ellis’ super fun organic lectures (and dad jokes!), and working with my team to synthesize our shiny metal
complexes and write my first research paper. I’m also looking forward to cooking tacos with Allyson for our cohort’s dinner this Saturday!