Evan Curtin is the May 2011 RSC ONS Challenge Winner

Evan Curtin, a chemistry freshman student working under the supervision of Jean-Claude Bradley at Drexel University, is the May 2011 Royal Society of Chemistry Open Notebook Science Challenge Award winner. He wins a cash prize from the RSC.

Evan's primary focus has centered on synthesizing aromatic imines and measuring their solubility in a number of organic solvents. This will allow us to generate Abraham descriptors for this class of compounds in order to predict their solubility in 70+ solvents. Coupled with our new model to include temperature dependent solubility, this should greatly facilitate optimal solvent prediction for this and related reactions.

Imine formation is of particular interest to the UsefulChem group because it is the first step of the Ugi reaction, which we have used to synthesize compounds with anti-malarial activity. But it is also a simple convenient reaction in itself to test our Solvent Selector's ability to predict optimal conditions (solvent and temperature) for isolation of products by precipitation.

Evan's synthesis experiments are available here:
http://usefulchem.wikispaces.com/Exp263
http://usefulchem.wikispaces.com/Exp262
http://usefulchem.wikispaces.com/Exp261


and his solubility experiments are listed here:
http://onschallenge.wikispaces.com/Exp207
http://onschallenge.wikispaces.com/Exp206
http://onschallenge.wikispaces.com/Exp205
http://onschallenge.wikispaces.com/Exp204
http://onschallenge.wikispaces.com/Exp201
http://onschallenge.wikispaces.com/Exp198
http://onschallenge.wikispaces.com/Exp197

Three more RSC ONS Awards will be made during 2011. Submissions from students in the US and the UK are still welcome.
For more information see:
http://onschallenge.wikispaces.com
http://onschallenge.wikispaces.com/RSCAwards2010

Hai Truong is Dec09 Submeta ONS Award Winner

Hai Truong, working under the supervision of Jean-Claude Bradley at Drexel University, is the December 2009 Submeta Open Notebook Science Challenge Award winner. He wins a cash prize from Submeta.

Hai mainly collaborated with Khalid Mirza to try to understand co-solute effects for Ugi products in benzene. See his experiments here:
http://onschallenge.wikispaces.com/list+of+experiments

This was the final Submeta ONS Award for 2008-9. We would like to thank all the sponsors - Submeta, Nature Publishing Group and Sigma-Aldrich - for making this project a reality. A summary of the results from the past year will be published shortly.

For more information see:
http://onschallenge.wikispaces.com
http://onschallenge.wikispaces.com/submetaawards08

Jan 2009 Submeta Open Notebook Science Award Winner Announced

Khalid Mirza, a Ph.D. student with Jean-Claude Bradley at Drexel University is the January 2009 winner of the Submeta Open Notebook Science Challenge Award, which includes a one year subscription to Nature magazine and a cash prize. Khalid's contributions included the measurement of non-aqueous solubilities using both evaporation and UV-vis techniques:
http://onschallenge.wikispaces.com/list+of+experiments

Eight more Submeta ONS Awards will be made during 2009. Submissions from students in the US and the UK are still welcome.
For more information see:
http://onschallenge.wikispaces.com
http://onschallenge.wikispaces.com/submetaawards08

First Submeta Open Notebook Science Award Winner

Jenny Hale, a Ph.D. student with Cameron Neylon at the University of Southampton, is the first of ten recipients of the Open Notebook Science Challenge Awards for December 2008. Open to students from the US and the UK who report their solubility measurements publicly as they work, the ONS Challenge Awards consist of a cash prize from Submeta and a one-year subscription to Nature magazine. Jean-Claude Bradley, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Drexel University, manages the award.

For more information see:
http://onschallenge.wikispaces.com
http://onschallenge.wikispaces.com/submetaawards08

Nature Sponsors Open Notebook Science Challenge

I'm pleased to announce that the Nature Publishing Group will provide one year subscriptions of the Nature journal to the first three Submeta Open Notebook Science Award winners. The first award is expected to be announced December 1, 2008. The Open Notebook Science Challenge is an open call to crowdsource solubility measurements in non-aqueous solvents. Participating students from the US and the UK who meet eligibility criteria are welcome to apply for one of ten Submeta ONS Awards.

Submeta Open Notebook Science Awards!

I am proud to announce that submeta is sponsoring TEN $500 (USD) Open Notebook Science awards as part of the ONS challenge to measure the solubility of compounds in non-aqueous solvents. Submeta follows Sigma-Aldrich as a sponsor for the project. Drexel University is managing the award distribution.

The idea was to make this available as widely as possible. However, because of legal issues, we were not able to make this open to everyone - only students from the US and UK are eligible. (see here for the complete rules).

I will be posting the list of judges shortly on the ONSchallenge wiki. They will be judging the process as much as the product and hopefully enable us to have a true ongoing peer-reviewed Open Notebook in chemistry.

This all came about from a FriendFeed conversation started by Bill Hooker a few months ago.