Historic Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is set to host the 252^nd American Chemical Society National Meeting and Exposition from August 21-25, 2016.  “Chemistry, of the People, by the People, for the People” is the inspirational theme for the event and sticking with tradition, we here at allthingsmetathesis.com will try to provide some inspiration of our own by providing an overview of the noteworthy olefin metathesis-based papers that will be presented in Philly.

Let’s start with Nobel Prize winner, Professor Bob Grubbs from Caltech who, as usual, has a very busy schedule over the first 2 days in Philadelphia.  On Sunday, August 21 at 1:30pm Prof. Grubbs will kick off a symposium titled “Complex Supramolecular Structures & Systems by Merging Self-Assembling Block Copolymers & Dendrimers” with his first presentation, Synthesis of polymers for self assembly (POLY 78).  He will follow this up with 3 different talks, in 3 different divisions on Monday August 22^nd.  Things begin at 8:35am in the Division of Organic Chemistry with his talk titled Recent advances in metal catalyzed reactions (ORGN 197).  This is followed by a talk at 11:00am in the Division of Small Chemical Business (SCHB 16 – Fundamental science to commercial adventures) where Bob will talk about the many pursuits he has had over the years while looking to commercialize the pioneering science developed in his laboratory at Caltech.  Finally, he wraps things up at 3:15pm with a talk, New materials for medical applications, that will be presented in a symposium titled “Synergy at the Bio-Nano Interface” in the Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry (COLL 324).

Various members of the Grubbs group will also be active in Philly, with a number of oral and poster presentations on the docket.  A full breakdown of the group’s activities is as follows:

• Alice Chang; WCC 5 – Self-assembly of brush block copolymers to nanostructured materials; Sunday August 21 @ 9:50am (oral presentation)
• Tim Montgomery; ORGN 628 – Development of stereoretentive olefin metathesis catalysts; Wednesday August 24 @ 2pm (oral presentation)
• Julian Edwards; POLY 569 – Ring-expansion metathesis polymerization of cycloolefins to highly pure cyclic polymers; Thursday August 25 @ 9:10am (oral presentation)
• Shaoxiong Luo; CHED 248 – Effects of alkyl group and NHC ligand variation with ruthenium-based olefin metathesis catalysts bearing chelating ortho-alkoxy benzylidenes; Monday August 22 @ 2-4pm (poster presentation)
• Alice Chang; POLY 388 – Consequences of low-? block copolymer design; Tuesday August 23 @ 6-8pm (poster presentation)
• Antsar Hlil; POLY 376 – New strategies for the synthesis of innovative recyclable polymers from raw materials; Tuesday August 23 @ 7-9pm (poster presentation)
• Shaoxiong Luo; ORGN 784 – Z-selective cross metathesis with 3(E)-1,3-dienes; Wednesday August 24 @ 7-9pm (poster presentation)

Other noteworthy abstracts that caught my attention are separated by day below:

Sunday, August 21:

• CATL 19 – Hongfeng Yin will talk about the catalytic activity of a tungsten doped mesoporous silicate material for the production of propene.
• PMSE 96 – Professor Ken Wagener from the University of Florida will present some research describing the synthesis of precisely controlled long-chain branched polyethylene materials via ADMET polymerization @ 3:45pm.
• PMSE 97 – Madalyn Radlauer, a postdoc from Marc Hillmyer’s group at the University of Minnesota will discuss some interesting CM selectivity involving 3-substituted cyclooctenes.

Monday, August 22:

• ORGN 677 – Stuart Rankin will present a poster at the Sci-Mix describing a particularly challenging RCM reaction to synthesize a novel oxabicyclo[6.2.1]undecene triol.
• AEI 66 – Madalyn Radlauer is back again with a poster presentation on some interesting proximal effects observed in bimetallic catalysis.

Tuesday, August 23:

• POLY 292 – Jianjun Cheng from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will present results on the synthesis of brush-like polymers containing polypeptide brush side chains. This involves a ROMP process of a functionalized norbornene followed by a controlled NCA polymerization reaction to incorporate the polypeptide brushes.
• POLY 302 – Yan Xia, a former Grubbs student, and current Professor at Stanford University will talk about a living, alternating ROMP process involving cyclopropenes.
• POLY 424 – Jamie Norwalk will have a poster describing an entropy-driven ROMP process for the preparation of precisely sequenced PLGAs for use in bioengineering applications.

Wednesday, August 24:

• ENVR 433 – Erisa Saraci will present a talk where olefin metathesis was investigated as a means to the production of terephthalic acid precursors through the CM of bio-sourced sorbates with acrylates.
• POLY 449 – Louis Do from the Friscic lab at McGill University will present some work on a mechanochemical approach to the production of polymeric materials via Ru-catalyzed ROMP and/or ADMET processes.

Finally, Materia’s own Dr. Richard (Dick) Pederson, will be presenting a paper on Tuesday, August 23^rd at 10:30am in the Industrial Inorganic Chemistry Symposium where he will describe some relevant commercial applications of olefin metathesis (INOR 308 – Commercial applications of olefin metathesis).  The talk will cover various commercial examples employing Grubbs Catalyst® technology, as well as, some exciting new developments in catalyst design and reactivity.  Materia will not have a booth at the Expo this time around, so please check out Dick’s talk to hear a little bit more about Materia and some of the interesting commercial applications we are investigating.  We hope you have a great show in Philadelphia and as always, we appreciate any comments or feedback you might have as we wish to continue tailoring our content to those interested in learning more about olefin metathesis!