There are around 12000 people registered to attend the ACS meeting but it seems strangely quiet in the sessions. Maybe it’s the gale force winds and horizontal rain that are keeping people away but for me the draw of cutting edge chemistry is worth battling against the elements (and I don’t mean the chemical kind).
My lecture of the day came from Mo Movassaghi, who described his groups very elegant work on alkaloid synthesis. He has recently published an Edge article in Chemical Science and seemed delighted with the publication process at the RSC, so I look forward to receiving more top articles from him in the future.
Tonight I joined the Young Academic Investigators from the organic division for dinner. These ‘rising stars’ of organic chemistry were a very friendly and down to earth bunch and bearing in mind their session’s 8 am start tomorrow they sensibly headed off to bed at a very reasonable hour. Top tips from these leading minds:
1) Bad weather: you just need to wrap up and think of it as invigorating
2) Don’t trust a New Zealander’s sense of humour – you’ll never think of strawberries in the same way again…
Fancy reading Mo Movassaghi’s latest Edge Article on ‘Total synthesis of all (−)-agelastatin alkaloids’? Why not download it and read it here first – all Chemical Science articles are free to access until the end of 2011.
