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46968-SE
8th International Conference on Heteroatom Chemistry (ICHAC-8), August 2007, Riverside, CA

Christopher A. Reed, University of California (Riverside)

This conference was attended by 160 participants from 20 different countries. The international component was critical because the US has traditionally been underrepresented in heteroatom and main group chemistry. A stronger blending of inorganic and organic chemistry was present at this conference compared to earlier conferences in the ICHAC series. By keeping the size managable, a Gordon-type atmosphere was created with lots of discussion, formal and informal. The most common comment about the conference was that the level of science was very high. Judging by the high attendance rates (60-100%) at lectures and poster sessions throughout the entire 4 days of the conference, participants were very engaged. Highlights of the conference were the plenary speakers (Robert Grubbs, Larry Sneddon, Akira Sekiguchi, Jose Barluenga, Thomas Klapoetke, Warren Piers and John Hartwig) who all brought organic and inorganic chemistry together in interesting ways within the context of heteroatom chemistry. Modern and topical themes of chemistry were very evident in the invited lectures. These included heteroatoms in new ligands for catalysis with many new catalyst optimization results arising from new ligand platforms. A number of new applications to natural products synthesis and pharmaceutically useful chemistry were reported. New heteroatom polymer and materials chemistry was present in abundance and it is clear this will be an active arena for discovery in the coming years. Novel fundamental heteroatom chemistry continues to be exciting such as the chemistry of stable Si-Si triply bonded species, stable carbenes and carbene analogues, stabilized reactive cations, etc. The conference was clearly successful and profited greatly from PRF support of overseas speakers. Specifically, they were Akira Sekiguchi (Japan), Jose Barluenga (Spain), Thomas Klapoetke (Germany), Binne Zwanenburg (Netherlands), Yohsuke Yamamoto (Japan) and Martin Ostreich (Germany).

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