![\"man](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/weix2.jpg\")
Daniel Weix, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Rochester, has been named a recipient of the Novartis Early Career Award in Organic Chemistry.<\/p>\nDaniel Weix, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Rochester, has been named a recipient of the Novartis Early Career Award in Organic Chemistry.<\/p>\n
Novartis, a multi-national pharmaceutical company based in Switzerland, honors two scientists each year who are \u201cwithin 10 years of having established an independent academic research career in the areas of organic or bioorganic chemistry in the broadest sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Novartis Early Career Award comes with a $150,000 grant over three years to continue the recipient\u2019s research.<\/p>\n
Weix, who specializes in organic (carbon-based) synthesis, is working on developing better ways of creating molecules in order to accelerate the discovery of new, useful compounds, including pharmaceuticals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis award is especially gratifying because Novartis really understands what\u2019s needed to develop new pharmaceuticals,\u201d said Weix.<\/p>\n
Most methods for making carbon-carbon bonds unite a nucleophile with an electrophile\u2014nucleophiles donate election pairs, whereas electrophiles accept electron pairs. 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
Specifically, Weix\u2019s research involves 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
\u201cThe award will also give me the opportunity to interact with scientists at Novartis,\u201d said Weix. \u201cIt\u2019s important for me to hear about new problems and research possibilities directly from scientists on the front lines of biomedical research.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weix earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005. He joined the University of Rochester faculty in 2008. He\u2019s received several honors, including the Thieme Chemistry Journal Prize, an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Novartis, a multi-national pharmaceutical company based in Switzerland, honors two scientists each year who are \u201cwithin 10 years of having established an independent academic research career in the areas of organic or bioorganic chemistry in the broadest sense.\u201d The Novartis Early Career Award comes with a $150,000 grant over three years to continue the recipient\u2019s research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":85322,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[486,19862,16072],"class_list":["post-85222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sci-tech","tag-awards","tag-department-of-chemistry","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n