Claremont, Calif. (October 14, 2011) — Assistant Professor Anna Wenzel will present “Mechanistic Studies on the Olefin Metathesis Reaction,” a paper co-authored with Pitzer College alumnus Garrett Blake ’10, at the American Chemical Society Regional Meeting in Pasadena, CA on November 10. Wenzel teaches chemistry at Pitzer College’s W.M. Keck Science Department.
Wenzel’s presentation will outline the research she conducted with Blake concerning the fundamentals behind the olefin metathesis reaction. The study was performed in collaboration with Professor Robert Grubbs, who was awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize for this reaction. A detailed account of these studies was published earlier this year in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Wenzel will also incorporate this research into The Handbook of Metathesis (Wiley-VCH), the definitive guidebook for the olefin metathesis reaction, which she is currently updating and editing.
Garrett Blake majored in chemistry at Pitzer College. He has gone on to pursue doctoral studies on olefin metathesis in the laboratory of Professor Chris Bielawski at the University of Texas at Austin.
