Electrochemistry
- Galvanic Cell
Oxidation is defined as the addition of oxygen to a substancethe loss of hydrogen from a substancethe...
- Hey! We Used C-h Activation To Make A Natural Product!
Once upon a time, we were interested making fumitremorgin A... Phil's interest in verruculogen and fumitremorgin A has been long standing (see: Austamine and Okaramine), but strangely the endoperoxide-containing indole alkaloids haven't...
- Diterpenoid-alkaloids Are So...fancy (you Already Know)
The second paper on our efforts toward diterpenes and related diterpenoid-alkaloids is out in JACS now. This is building off of work previously published in Angewante last year. The story of this project goes back more than 5 years. ...
- A Tale Of Two Olefins
A prototype of the graphical abstract that Phil didn't want to submit to JACS.Today marks the day that another paper makes its way out of the hot little presses of the ACS Publication Office and into the world of chemistry. This time, it's a...
- Group Member Of This Blog
Group 1 ~Thermochemistry~ Group Leader : Khor Sheng Yau Muhammad Amirul Syafiq Bin Azudin ...
Electrochemistry
A Taxol synthesis is simple
I got the results back from NSF fellowship application today. I didn't get the fellowship, but that doesn't matter. Something funny was that one of the reviewers said my “proposed project looked simple or at least written that way.”
I’m the chump working on the taxane project. The overall goal is in the figure below. You might have seen the Nature Chemistry paper where we described the construction of the taxane skeleton. My project involves multiple C-H oxidation transformations on this skeleton en route to Taxol. Simple, right?
I’m not here to toot my own horn or rally up a pity party, but I think every chemist familiar with synthetic organic chemistry will agree this endeavor is somewhere between crazy difficult and flat-out impossible. No one would claim it looks simple. Then why is this NSF reviewer judging my application if they don’t see the difficulty of this project?
To be clear, I wouldn't care if I scored “excellent” on everything and still didn't get the fellowship. There are many people deserving of this award, and who am I to say I deserve it more than anyone else? Also, there are plenty of reasons to not fund me or this project. My problem is that reviewers are unqualified to judge my “intellectual merit” if they don’t know the basic frontiers of my field. I guess the moral of the story is don’t assume people know why your science is hard. Be very explicit. This problem probably applies to some extent to other award applications and even applying for a job.
- Galvanic Cell
Oxidation is defined as the addition of oxygen to a substancethe loss of hydrogen from a substancethe...
- Hey! We Used C-h Activation To Make A Natural Product!
Once upon a time, we were interested making fumitremorgin A... Phil's interest in verruculogen and fumitremorgin A has been long standing (see: Austamine and Okaramine), but strangely the endoperoxide-containing indole alkaloids haven't...
- Diterpenoid-alkaloids Are So...fancy (you Already Know)
The second paper on our efforts toward diterpenes and related diterpenoid-alkaloids is out in JACS now. This is building off of work previously published in Angewante last year. The story of this project goes back more than 5 years. ...
- A Tale Of Two Olefins
A prototype of the graphical abstract that Phil didn't want to submit to JACS.Today marks the day that another paper makes its way out of the hot little presses of the ACS Publication Office and into the world of chemistry. This time, it's a...
- Group Member Of This Blog
Group 1 ~Thermochemistry~ Group Leader : Khor Sheng Yau Muhammad Amirul Syafiq Bin Azudin ...