Reports: SE

48834-SE Frontiers in Metal Dithiolene Chemistry, at the ACS National Meeting, August 17-21, 2008, Philadelphia, PA

Partha Basu, Duquesne University

The symposium entitled ‘Frontiers in Metal Dithiolene Chemistry’ had 16 speakers including the two organizers in four different sessions organized thematically. The four sessions were - Electronic Structure; Materials Science and Applications ; Catalysis and Reactivity; Dithiolenes in Biology and Model Studies. The sessions were chaired by Dr. Martin Kirk (New Mexico), Bob Pilato, Jim Donahue and  C. David Garner, respectively. The speakers included academicians of different levels to industrial scientists.  There were six speakers from outside the country, listed at the end of this document, five of them could be supported by $720 each from this grant towards their travel cost.  Dr. C. David Garner who was the president of the Royal Chemical Society did not need any support.  In addition, we were able to cover a part of the registration cost for all speaker who did not decline the support through funds from Inorganic Division of the American Chemical Society. Support from our industrial partners Exxon and Epolin allowed us to host a modest reception for the speakers. We tried very hard to include women speakers, and several of them declined, however we were pleased that Dr. Margot Wubbens (Duke) replaced K.V. Rajagopalan also from Duke, who could not attend due to health problems.  The symposium was well attended, typically ~70 people in the audience, lowest was ~20 and at times all seats were taken and people were standing.  We have heard many positive comments from the speakers and the audience about quality of the talks to the arrangements made.

  1. Karl Wieghardt (Max Planck Institute for Bioinorganic Chemistry, Max Planck Society, Muelheim, Germany)  “The electronic structure of tris(dithiolene) metal complexes - a modern solution to an old problem”
  2. Neil Robertson (School of Chemistry, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH93JJ, United Kingdom) “Dithiolenes as Functional Ligands in Solar Cell Dyes”.
  3. Marc Fourmigue (Sciences Chimiques de Rennes, Université Rennes 1 & CNRS, France) “Paramagnetic organometallic dithiolene complexes”
  4. C. David Garner(School of Chemistry, Nottingham University, Nottingham, United Kingdom) “Oxotransferase Enzymes: Molybdenum versus Tungsten and the Role of Molybdopterin”
  5. Reizo Kato (Condensed Molecular Materials Laboratory, Hirosawa, Wako-shi, Saitama 351-0198, Japan) “Electronic structures of metallic and superconducting metal dithiolene complexes”
  6. Guenter Schwarz (Institute of Biochemistry, University of Cologne, Cologne D-50674, Germany) “Molybdenum cofactor deficiency: cyclic pyrantoperin monophosphate as potential drug and intermediate for synthetic steps”.

In addition to the platform presentation we also had a poster session that had many graduate and undergraduate students presenting.

Finally, we are very thankful to the PRF for financial support which allowed us to host a successful symposium.