Green Chemistry

	Symposium Organizer Martin Walker SUNY Potsdam Contact

Green chemistry is a chemical philosophy encouraging the design of products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances. The focus is on minimizing the hazard and maximizing the efficiency of any chemical choice. Innovative approaches to green chemistry have involved the development of new catalysts, the redesign of synthetic pathways, the design of reactions using environmentally friendly solvent systems (for example water), and the reformulation of commerical products to utilize more environmentally friendly ingredients.

NERM2008 Green Chemistry Technical Program

Monday am: Green Chemistry and SOMAB Joint Session on C-H Bond Activation

Monday pm: Green Chemistry In Chemistry Education

Monday pm: Green Chemistry Posters

Tuesday am: Green Chemistry

Also of  interest to Green Chemistry attendees:

Tuesday evening: 21st Century Energy

C-H bond activation

Traditional organic synthesis has dealt mainly with manipulation of pre-existing functional groups in order to direct reactions and construct targets. With the impact of green chemistry on synthesis, chemists today are now focusing their efforts on building molecular complexity more efficiently, directly onto a hydrocarbon bearing little or no functionality. For example, a traditional approach to C-C bond construction might involve halogenation followed by metallation, followed in turn by a coupling; the new “green” approach simply couples the starting hydrocarbon directly. Great progress has been made in recent years in devising new processes for coupling directly onto hydrocarbons, and for producing new functional groups with specific regiochemistry. This session brings together some of the leading workers in this exciting field.

Invited Speakers

	Roshan Jachuck Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Clarkson University Opportunities offered by Green Processing
	Amy Cannon Co-Founder & Director Beyond Benign Foundation Green Chemistry in Education		Richard Hartmann Department of Chemistry Nazareth College Using biodiesel to teach general chemistry principles

C-H Bond Activation

	Keith Fagnou, Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa and 2003 winner of the Polanyi Prize, has quickly established himself with his creative new approaches to palladium-catalyzed arylations. He has greatly expanded our knowledge of how even electron-deficient arenes may be coupled directly with aryl halides and with other arenes.
	Chao-Jun Li is Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Green/Organic Chemistry at McGill University. He established his career with his methods for running organic reactions in water – even Grignard-type processes – for which he received the 2001 US Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award. He is a leading proponent of methods for synthetic efficiency (such as described above), and he has devised methods for copper catalyzed “cross-dehydrogenative coupling” (CDC) reactions involving C-H bond activation.
	Jinquan Yu is a Professor at the Scripps Research Institute. He has shown that it is possible to activate even sp3 C-H bonds for coupling through palladium catalysis, for example methyl groups of 2-tert-butyloxazolines or methylamines. He has also developed methods for introducing other functionality, such as iodo or oxygenated groups.
	Olafs Daugulis is Assistant Professor at the University of Houston and a is the 2008 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. He has developed simple methods for direct arylation of various aromatics using palladium and copper catalysts, as well as arylation of unactivated sp3 C-H bonds.

Green Chemistry Invited Speakers in Other Symposia

	John C. Warner Warner-Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry The Chemistry Enthusiasts Program