Congratulations Di!

Congratulations to Dionissia who passed her PhD viva voce exam today! After 4 years of hard work the day has finally come. We are having a party, it’s great to have something positive to celebrate. The examination was conducted by Prof. Hermen Overkleeft (Uni. Leiden) as the external examiner and Assist. Prof. Xiangming Zhu (UCD) as the internal examiner, with Prof. Declan Gilheany (UCD) as chair. In the afternoon Prof. Overkleeft gave an excellent seminar on his own research in the areas of chemical biology and carbohydrate chemistry. It is great to have international visitors giving in-person seminars again. Di’s PhD was sponsored by Science Foundation Ireland through a CDA award to Eoghan. She completed an industrial placement in Syngenta (Switzerland) and has published two papers from her PhD to-date in Chemical Science and in J. Biol. Chem., and more will follow. Her next research position is a postdoctoral fellowship in Switzerland. Good Luck with the postdoc Di!

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New paper in Org Lett

Congrats to Alex and Vinny on their latest paper which was published online today in Org Lett. It is the second paper from Alex and Vinny in the area of organosulfur chemistry. It describes the use of heteroarylsulfonium salts to make bis-heteroaryls through reaction with heteroaryl Grignard reagents. It goes beyond our previous work making 2,4′-, 2,3′, and 2,2′-bipyridines accessible by a single method. We also described a versatile route to the biologically active natural products Caerulomycin A and E.

We are grateful to NUI, IRC and the SFI research centre SSPC for research funding. The article is available on an open access basis to free to read online:

Org Lett 2021, article asap. A M Horan, V K Duong,* E M McGarrigle*—Synthesis of Bis-heteroaryls Using Grignard Reagents and Pyridylsulfonium Salts. DOI:10.1021/acs.orglett.1c03379