David Bulger's Drexel visit

David Bulger (February 2009 Submeta ONS Challenge winner) from Oral Roberts University just completed a two week visit in my lab at Drexel - thanks to the generous efforts of Andrew Lang. It was truly a pleasure to finally meet him in person and for the students in my group exchange tips and techniques for working in the lab.

David got a lot done in that short time. On his first day he repeated a Ugi reaction (EXP223) known to work well so that he could learn how to do it and carry that knowledge back to ORU. He attempted several other Ugi reactions (EXP226 and EXP229) to add to our knowledge of conditions leading to precipitates. One of the experiments (EXP230) involved using a 96 well plate for rapid screening. Unfortunately, it was difficult to properly seal the wells and solvent evaporation was too problematic. We are always looking for methods to accelerate the execution of experiments so it was certainly worth trying and we learned something from the trial.

David also did several solubility experiments and resolved conclusively previously contradictory solubility measurements for 1-pyrenebutanoic acid (EXP091). Finally, he looked at the accuracy of our NMR technique for measuring solubility using known concentrations of 2-phenylbutanoic acid (EXP102). I'll be posting about this in more detail shortly as part of a post on what we have learned recently about measuring solubility. For more of David's solubility experiments see our experiment list.

David is now in the UK in Cameron Neylon's lab. His current experiments are reported here.