Dartmouth Dreyfus Symposium on Organic Chemistry

Saturday, May 11, 2019 Hanover Inn Dartmouth, Hanover, NH

Plenary Speakers :

John Wood (Baylor University, USA)
Franz-Peter Montforts (Univ. of Bremen, Germany)
Victor Snieckus (Queen's Univ., Canada)
Glenn Micalizio (Dartmouth College, USA)
Albert Padwa (Emory Univ., USA)
Kendall Houk (UCLA, USA)

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Gordon W. Gribble is a native of San Francisco, California, and received his undergraduate education initially at San Francisco City College (AA in 1961) and subsequently at the University of California at Berkeley (BS in 1963), with a major in chemistry and a minor in biochemistry.  He earned a Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of Oregon in 1967, where he was a National Institutes of Health Predoctoral Fellow from 1965 - 67.  He then spent a year doing research as a National Cancer Institute Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of California, Los Angeles.  He joined the faculty of Dartmouth College in 1968 and was promoted to Full Professor of Chemistry in 1980.  He served as Chair from 1988 - 1991.  In 2005, he was named to the inaugural endowed Chair as "The Dartmouth Professor of Chemistry." Professional awards include a National Institutes of Health Research Career Development Award, 1971 - 1976, a National Science Foundation Science Faculty Professional Development Award, 1977 - 1978, Dartmouth Senior Faculty Fellowships in 1984, 1991, and 1999.  He was one of six national awardees in 1988 of the American Cyanamid Academic Award.  In 1997 he was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award by the Dartmouth College senior class, and in 2006 he was presented the Arts and Sciences Graduate Faculty Mentoring Award.  He has been a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology, the University of Waterloo, the General Electric Company, the University of Hawaii, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, which included three senior faculty fellowships.   

With the outstanding effort of 46 graduate students, 33 postdoctoral researchers, and 152 undergraduates, Dr. Gribble has published nearly 400 papers and review articles, and four books in the field of organic and environmental chemistry, dealing with the synthesis of biologically active natural products, from plant, insect, and marine sources, new synthetic methodology, heterocyclic organic chemistry, novel DNA bis-Intercalators, and synthetic triterpenoids with unprecedentedly anti-inflammatory activity, one of which, "CDDO" (bardoxolone methyl), completed Phase 3 clinical trials for the treatment of chronic kidney disease in Stage 4 diabetes patients.   Since 1995 he has co-edited the annual series "Progress in Heterocyclic Chemistry", and has co-authored two editions of "Palladium in Heterocyclic Chemistry", with Jack Li.  He is a member of the American Chemical Society and the International Society of Heterocyclic Chemistry.

Dr. Gribble has had a long-standing interest in organic chemical toxicity, chemical carcinogenesis, and chemicals in the environment, with particular expertise on pesticides, herbicides, dioxin, chemical warfare, and naturally occurring organohalogen compounds.  He has written, lectured, and consulted extensively on these subjects over the past 35 years, and has written two monographs documenting more than 5,000 naturally occurring organohalogen compounds.

Dr. Gribble's outside interests include winemaking, tournament chess, and scuba diving.  As a top-ten nationally ranked home winemaker for the past 40 years, he has had an inveterate interest in the chemistry of wine and winemaking.  He won the NH Amateur Chess Championship in 1987.  He has a familial interest in the Battle of Gettysburg and in the WWII battle of Iwo Jima, with personal connections to both signature events in our history.

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Peter A. Jacobi received his B.S. degree in Chemistry in 1967 from the University of New Hampshire, and his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry in 1973 from Princeton University (E.C. Taylor).  After two years at Harvard as a postdoctoral fellow (R.B. Woodward), he joined the faculty of Wesleyan University in 1975.  In 1993 he was named the John Wesley Beach Professor of Chemistry.  In the fall of 1997 he moved from Wesleyan to Dartmouth, where in 2004 he was appointed the New Hampshire Professor of Chemistry, a position he held until 2013.  Dr. Jacobi has been the recipient of the American Cyanamid Company Award for "Advancement of the Art and Science of Synthesis" (1985); the Connecticut Valley ACS Award for "Outstanding Contributions to Chemistry" (1988); and the Caleb T. Winchester Award for "Excellence as a Scholar-Teacher" (1996).  In 2010 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Chemical Society.  He is the author of nearly 100 publications in the general area of natural products chemistry, as well as the text Introductory Heterocyclic Chemistry.

Research in the Jacobi group focuses on three areas of organic chemistry: (1) mechanistic theory, providing a detailed analysis of how reactions occur; (2) synthetic methodology, developing new reactions and procedures for synthesizing organic molecules; and (3) the synthesis of complex molecules of either natural or unnatural origin. This last area is often the most challenging and serves as a measure of our understanding of the science. To date we have carried out total syntheses of over thirty natural products, many of which have interesting biological activity.

His non-chemical interests include travel and outdoor activities of all sorts. In retirement he may try to reacquaint himself with the piano.

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John L. Wood received a B.A. degree from the University of Colorado in 1985 and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991 under the direction of Amos B. Smith, III.  In 1991 he moved to Harvard University as an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow and continued studying natural products synthesis in the laboratories of Stuart Schreiber.  He joined the faculty at Yale University in 1993 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Full Professor in 1998.  In 2006, Professor Wood joined the faculty at Colorado State University as the Albert I. Meyers Professor of Chemistry and in 2013 moved to Baylor University as the Robert A. Welch Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas Scholar.

The major focus of Professor Wood's research is synthetic organic chemistry.  Of primary emphasis is the design of innovative solutions to problems in natural product synthesis.  In choosing targets for synthesis, Wood gives equal emphasis to structural complexity and biological activity.  Giving complexity a high priority and pursuing targets with no obvious solution for synthesis ensures innovation in the synthetic design.  Preparing targets of biological interests adds value to the research by providing access to compounds of potential utility to investigations outside the traditional realm of chemistry.  Within this general research paradigm, projects are initially designed to address fundamental questions in chemistry.  As the chemistry matures, the role it can play in producing biologically interesting molecular systems is evaluated. 

Professor Wood received a Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award in 1993, an American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Award in 1994, an NSF CAREER award in 1996, an Eli Lilly Young Faculty Award in 1996, a Glaxo-Wellcome Chemistry Scholar Award in 1996, and a Bristol-Myers Squibb Research Award in 1997.  He was the Parke-Davis Distinguished Michigan Lecturer in 1997 and received a Novartis Chemistry Lectureship and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in 1997.  He served as the guest editor for the Tetrahedron Symposium in Print on Synthetic Methods V and as a visiting Professor at the University of Auckland.  In 1998 Professor Wood was the recipient of research awards from the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, the Yamanouchi USA foundation, and received the Zeneca Excellence in Chemistry Award.  In 2000 Professor Wood received a Merck Faculty Award and in 2001 he was awarded The Kitasato Intistute's  Microbial Chemistry Medal.  In 2004 Professor Wood was named as a Cope Scholar by the American Chemical Society and in 2009 has received the Katritzky Award from the International Society of Heterocyclic Chemistry.  Professor Wood is the Tetrahedron Letters associate editor for the Americas and is on the board of editors for Organic Syntheses . 

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Professor Montforts received his diploma in Chemistry from the University of Muenster in 1972 and then received his Ph.D. under the direction of Professor Burchard Franck, also at Muenster, in 1974.  Following that, Professor Montforts joined the laboratory of Professor Albert Eschenmoser at the ETH Zurich in Switzerland as a DFG postdoctoral fellow.  After completing his habilitation in organic chemistry at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt in 1983, Professor Montforts joined the faculty at the University of Frankfurt in 1979 as an assistant professor and then moved to the University of Bremen as a full professor in 1986 where he stayed in his retirement in 2015.  Among the awards received and positions held by Professor Montforts include:  William P. and Dewilda N. Harris German/Dartmouth Distinguished Visiting Professor (2008 and 2102), Johann Gottfried Herder Visiting Professor at the University of Science and Technology (Hanoi, Vietnam) in 2015, Liebig Fellowship (1978), Siemens Medal for excellent young researchers (1981), and the Liebig Award (1983).

The main focus is directed to total and partial synthesis of linear and cyclic tetrapyrroles. Novel naturally occurring hydroporphyrinoid pigments like bonellin, heme d1 and sirohydrochlorin are typical representatives of this class of compounds. For achieving construction of these macro heterocycles new methods for preparation of monocyclic pyrrolic building blocks had to be developed. Artificial congeners of these natural tetrapyrrolic pigments were synthesized with respect to applications for artificial photosynthesis, photodynamic therapy and immobilization on metals and metal oxides.

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Victor Algirdas Snieckus was born in Kaunas, Lithuania and spent his childhood in Germany during World War II.  Training: U. of Alberta (B.Sc.), strongly influenced by the iconoclastic teacher, Rube Sandin; U. California, Berkeley (M.Sc.), appreciation of physical organic chemistry under D.S. Noyce; U. Oregon (Ph.D.), discovering his passion for organic synthesis under the excellent mentor, Virgil Boekelheide; National Research Council, Ottawa, postdoctoral tenure with the ardent Ted Edwards. Appointments: U. of Waterloo, Assistant Professor, 1966; Monsanto/NRC Industrial Research Chair, 1992 - 1998; Queen's University, 1998 - 2009, inaugural Bader Chair in Organic Chemistry.  He continues fundamental research as Bader Chair Emeritus as well as Director of Snieckus Innovations, an institute for synthesis of small molecules for the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries.  He still plays hockey and wishes he had not given up the clarinet.

Selective awards: Arthur C. Cope Scholar (2001, one of 4 Canadians), Order of the Grand Duke Gediminas (2002, from the President of Lithuania), Arfedson-Schlenk (2003, Geselschaft Deutscher Chemiker), Bernard Belleau (2005, Canadian Society for Chemistry), Givaudan-Karrer Medal (2008, U. Zurich), Honoris causa (2009, Technical U. Tallinn, Estonia), Global Lithuanian Leader (2012).  Research: The Snieckus group has contributed to the development and application of the directed ortho metalation reaction (DoM) and used it as a conceptual platform for discovery of new efficient methods for the regioselective synthesis of polysubstituted aromatics and heteroaromatics.  The directed remote metalation (DreM) reaction and DoM – linked transition metal catalyzed cross coupling (especially Suzuki-Miyaura) were first uncovered in his laboratories.  These have found broad application in agrochemical and pharmaceutical industry, e.g. fungicide TAKE-ALL (Monsanto), anti-AIDS Sustiva, anti-inflammatory Losartan (Bristol-Myers Squibb).

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Professor Micalizio trained as a Fellow of the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation in the laboratories of Professor Stuart L. Schreiber at Harvard University (2001 - 2003), received his PhD at the University of Michigan (2001) after graduate studies in the laboratories of Professor William R. Roush, and completed undergraduate studies at Ramapo College of NJ (1996).  Prior to joining the Dartmouth Faculty in 2013, Professor Micalizio was an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute (2008 - 2013), and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Yale University (2003 - 2008).  His research is focused on invention within the field of synthetic organic chemistry, aiming to establish new reaction methods and synthesis strategies that enable discovery in medicine and biomedical science. 

Among the awards that Professor Micalizio has receive include:  Lilly New Faculty Award, Lilly Grantee Award, Boehringer Ingelheim New Investigator Award, American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award, Beckman Young Investigator Award, Sanofi Visions in Chemistry Award, University of Michigan Kasimir Fajans Award.  Earlier Awards as a graduate student include: Rackham Predoctoral Fellow, Roche Award for Excellence in Organic Chemistry, American Chemical Society Division of Organic Chemistry Predoctoral Fellow.

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Albert Padwa was born in New York City. He received both his B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University. Following an NSF postdoctoral position at the University of Wisconsin, he was appointed as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the Ohio State University. He moved to SUNY Buffalo as Associate Professor and was promoted to Professor in 1969. Since 1979, he was appointed the William Patterson Timmie Professor of Chemistry at Emory University. Al's research interests have encompassed heterocyclic chemistry, alkaloid synthesis, tandem organometallic chemistry, and organic photochemistry.

Among other awards, he has been the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, a John S. Guggenheim Fellowship, an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award, a Senior Award in Heterocyclic Chemistry from the International Society of Heterocyclic Chemists and an ACS Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award. He served as the Chairman of the Organic Division of the ACS and as President of the International Society of Heterocyclic Chemistry. He is currently one of the Associate Editors for Organic Reactions. His hobbies include climbing tall mountains and building Calder like mobiles.

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K. N. Houk received his A.B., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard, working with R. B. Woodward on experimental tests of orbital symmetry selection rules.  In 1968, he joined the faculty at Louisiana State University, moved to the University of Pittsburgh in 1980, and to UCLA in 1986.  From 1988 - 1990, he was Director of the Chemistry Division of the National Science Foundation.  He was Chairman of the UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry from 1991 - 1994 and became the Saul Winstein Chair in Organic Chemistry in 2009. Since 2016, he has been the Saul Winstein Distinguished Research Chair in Organic Chemistry at UCLA.  Professor Houk is an authority on theoretical and computational organic chemistry.  He has published over 1200 articles in refereed journals and is among the 100 most-cited chemists, with an h-index of 123.

Professor Houk was a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow.  He received the L.S.U. Distinguished Research Master Award in 1968, the von Humboldt Foundation U.S. Senior Scientist Award in 1981, the Akron ACS Section Award in 1984, and an Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the ACS in 1988.  He was the 1991 recipient of the ACS James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry and was the 1998 winner of the Schrödinger Medal of the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists (WATOC).  He was the Faculty Research Lecturer at UCLA, received the Bruylants Chair from the University of Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium in 1998, and received an honorary doctorate (Dr. rer. nat. h. c.) from the University of Essen in Germany in 1999.  He has been an Erskine Fellow in New Zealand, a Lady Davis Fellow at the Technion in Haifa, Israel, and a JSPS Fellow in Japan.  He was named Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, in 2014.  He won the Tolman Medal of the Southern California Section of the ACS in 1999.  He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002 and the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Sciences in 2003.  He was the 2003 winner of the ACS Award for Computers in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences.  He is a Fellow of the AAAS, the ACS, and of the WATOC. He was awarded the Arthur C. Cope Award of the ACS in 2009, was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2010, became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2012, and was awarded the Robert Robinson Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2012.  He received the UCLA Society of Postdoctoral Scholars Mentoring Award and the UCLA Glenn T. Seaborg Medal in 2013.