The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation has named Daniel Weix, an assistant professor of chemistry at the URochester, as one of 14 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholars for 2014. The award is given to faculty members in the chemical sciences who are within the first five years of their academic careers, have created an independent body of outstanding scholarship, and demonstrated a commitment to education.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award is the Dreyfus Foundation\u2019s flagship program,\u201d states Dr. Mark Cardillo, executive director of The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. \u201cThe intent is to support exceptional young academic researchers at an early and crucial stage of their careers. They have been selected based on their independent contributions to both research in the chemical sciences and education.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is humbling to be included on a list with so many talented chemists, including several of my colleagues at Rochester,\u201d said Weix. \u201cIn addition to the honor, the award will enable us to pursue new research directions that we would otherwise not have been able to investigate.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award comes with an unrestricted research grant of $75,000 for each honoree.<\/p>\n
Weix specializes in organic (carbon-based) synthesis and is working to develop better ways of creating molecules in order to accelerate the discovery of new, useful compounds, including pharmaceuticals.<\/p>\n
Most methods for making carbon-carbon bonds unite a nucleophile\u2014which donates electron pairs\u2014with an electrophile\u2014which accepts electron pairs.\u00a0 The carbon nucleophiles are especially difficult to manufacture, making them costly and hard to obtain for researchers who need them to conduct their lab work.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important that compounds can be easily made by pharmaceutical companies,\u201d said Weix, \u201cOtherwise, we\u2019ll never know their potential for being effective drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weix\u2019s research program has developed several new methods of directly coupling\u2014or joining\u2014two different carbon electrophiles, avoiding nucleophiles entirely. The challenge of this approach is that the electrophiles are very alike, but must be differentiated for selective reactions to occur with metal catalysts. The Weix group has recently discovered how to distinguish the two species, making \u201ccross-electrophile coupling reactions\u201d possible.<\/p>\n
The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation is a leading non-profit organization devoted to the advancement of the chemical sciences.\u00a0 It was established in 1946 by chemist, inventor, and businessman Camille Dreyfus, in honor of his brother Henry.<\/p>\n
Weix earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005. He joined the Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ faculty in 2008. He\u2019s received several honors, including an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a Thieme Chemistry Journal Prize and an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Daniel Weix, assistant professor of chemistry, has been selected as one of 14 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholars for 2014, an award given to faculty members in the chemical sciences who are within the first five years of their academic careers and who have demonstrated outstanding scholarship and commitment to education. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-university-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n