The students in our sustainable chemistry EPSRC/SFI Doctoral Training Centre successfully defended their PhD project proposals at the annual “Dragons’ Den” event last week. Well done to Maria, Ishbel, James and the entire Cohort 10!

We present a new method for the 2,2-difluoroethylation of sulfur, nitrogen and oxygen pronucleophiles via a hypervalent iodine strategy in Angewandte Chemie today. We were able to generate (2,2-difluoroethyl)(aryl)iodonium triflate in situ and apply it to the electrophilic 2,2-difluoroethylation of heteroatom nucleophiles, including the drugs Captopril, Normorphine and Mefloquine. Competing alpha– and beta-elimination reactions are supressed by expedient choice of stabilising co-ligands and solvent. Congratulations to all the authors, Suman, Charlotte McI, Andrew, Charlotte S, and Stephen!

For a link to the paper in Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., click here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/anie.202410954

A ChemRxiv preprint of this work is available here: https://chemrxiv.org/engage/chemrxiv/article-details/6667f4a4e7ccf7753a7ce502

Congratulations to Liam Fitzgerald, who was officially awarded his PhD degree by the University of Galway last week. Liam developed new deuteration approaches in the O’Duill group and is currently working as a Senior Scientist at Pharmaron. We’re excited to follow his future scientific career.

We had a great group outing together with the Denton lab on Friday. The weather was perfect for a hike at the edge of the Peak District, with a stop for fish & chips at lunch.

Miriam has been selected as one of the winners of the Thieme Chemistry Journal Awards 2024.

The award honours promising early-career researchers in the areas of chemical synthesis and catalysis. It is a great recognition of the exciting work the O’Duill group has carried out in the areas of transition metal catalysis and hypervalent iodine chemistry.

Find out more about our work in the O’Duill group, our research philosophy and how to join us (e.g. for a one-year MRes) in this video.

We were very lucky to have two excellent undergraduate researchers join our group this summer.
Charlotte Suwita joined the hypervalent iodine team on a DAAD RISE internship. She is now heading back to the University of Leipzig to finish her Chemistry BSc.
Kamil Konstanciak obtained an RSC undergraduate research bursary to investigate Cu-catalysed transformations. He is currently finishing the final year of his Chemistry MSci at Nottingham.
It was great to have Charlotte and Kamil in the group. We appreciate their hard work over the summer and wish them all the best for the future!

Congratulations to Liam Fitzgerald for successfully defending his PhD thesis!

As the group’s first PhD, Liam was instrumental in setting up the O’Duill lab in Galway, where he investigated palladium-catalysis for the functionalisation of small molecules without the need for directing groups. After Miriam’s move to Nottingham, his focus shifted to the design and synthesis of glycomimetics in Prof. Paul Murphy’s group. We wish Liam all the best at his new position with Pharmaron in London which he will be starting soon.

Methods for selective deuterium incorporation into drug-like molecules have become extremely valuable due to the commercial, mechanistic, and biological importance of deuterated compounds. Today, we report a programmable, non-directed labelling platform for the C2, C3, or C2-and-C3 deuteration of indoles under mild, user-friendly conditions. Congratulations to Liam, who drove the project through the pandemic, as well as Rachael and Andrew.

Click here for a link to the paper in JOC.
A pre-print of this work was deposited in ChemRxiv in July 2022.

Congratulations to Liam Fitzgerald, who was awarded the University of Galway BOC postgraduate award for his PhD work in the O’Duill and Murphy groups. Liam drove our work on indole deuteration during the pandemic, when lab closures and restricted access to analytical services made research very challenging. It’s great to see his efforts recognised with this prize.