Beth Elacqua Receives an ACS PRF Doctoral New Investigator Grant

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Beth Elacqua has been awarded an American Chemical Society (ACS) Petroleum Research Fund grant.

The ACS Petroleum Research Fund (PRF) is an endowed fund that supports fundamental chemistry research with a relation to petroleum of fossil fuels. The grants are typically intended as seed money, with the Doctoral New Investigator awards intended as start-up funds for researchers within the first three years of their first academic appointment. 

“I am excited to have the support of the PRF donors to extend our work on synthesizing new D-A polymers,” noted Dr. Elacqua.

The Elacqua group is founded on using organic synthesis to address challenges in polymer chemistry, and using polymer chemistry to circumvent bottlenecks in organic synthesis.  The group focuses on using organic synthesis in concert with concepts in physical organic chemistry (e.g., supramolecular chemistry, stereoelectronics) to design novel sequence-specific polymers, as well as other self-assembled polymers with applications in molecular recognition and catalysis.

The PRF grant will support Dr. Elacqua’s work on the design and synthesis of donor-acceptor conjugated polymers using ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP).  The Elacqua group’s efforts will also contribute toward probing the impact of both steric and electronic encumbrance on ROMP, as well as sequence effects on polymer properties. A paper describing the group’s work on this subject was recently published in Angewandte Chemie.

Please join the Department of Chemistry in congratulating Dr. Elacqua on this exciting accomplishment.

If you would like to learn more about the Elacqua group’s research, visit their group website.