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College of Arts and Sciences

Additional Rose Mercadante Chemistry Seminar Series  

Chemistry and Biochemistry

The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Rose Mercadannte Seminar Series is pleased to present a seminar entitled:

Insights into Chromatographic Enantiomeric Recognition of Allenes with Cellulose Carbamate Stationary Phase by Dr. Nelu Grinberg of Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Ridgefield CT.  

The seminar will be held on Tuesday, September 27, 2016 in the Helen Lerner Amphitheater, Science and Technology Center, Seton Hall University at 5:45 p.m.. Refreshments are available at 5:30 p.m. . The seminar is open to the community.  

Allenes are becoming highly sought building blocks for their ability to react with many different classes of substrates. They have three-carbon functional groups possessing a 1,2-diene moiety and serve as potential precursors in the synthesis of highly complex and strained target molecules of biological and industrial importance.  

Their unique reaction behavior where the reactivity is spread over three contiguous carbon atoms has been successfully applied to the field of pharmaceuticals, dyes, and polymers.  

Enantiomeric separation of a chiral allene was achieved on a 3μm Cellulose Carbamate column (Chiracel OD-3) using heptane as a mobile phase. The base-line separation was obtained in under 5 minutes. Thermodynamic experiments revealed that the allene undergoes mixed interactions, with a van’t Hoff plot exhibiting an entropic interaction. To ascertain the types of interactions between the two enantiomers of the allene with the stationary phase we pursued vibrational circular dichroism (VCD), along with density functional theory (DFT) calculation. Experiments revealed changes in the VCD spectra of cellulose upon interaction with heptane. This talk will highlight the interactions between the cellulose stationary phase and the two enantiomers through, as observed through VCD spectroscopy and DFT calculation.  

Dr. Nelu Grinberg is a Distinguished Research Fellow in the Chemical Development Department at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals in Ridgefield, CT. Prior to this, he worked for sixteen years in the Analytical Department at Merck Research Laboratories in Rahway, NJ, where he was a Senior Research Fellow. He has authored and coauthored over 150 publications, including articles and book chapters. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Liquid Chromatography and Related Techniques, Editor of the book series Chromatographic Science series, and Co-editor of the Advances in Chromatography series. He is also Member of the board of the Connecticut Separation Science Council and a Koltoff fellow of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Dr. Grinberg obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Technical University of lasi in Romania. He conducted post¬doctoral research with Professor Barry Karger at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, and with Professor Emanuel Gil-Av at The Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.