This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.
This award will support a twenty-four-month research fellowship by Dr. Anne M. Poduska to work with Dr. Eluvathingal D. Jemmis at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India.
For decades, researchers have sought to understand the appearance?and disappearance?of lone pair stereochemical activity in divalent lead and other heavy, post-transition elements. Due to its sensitivity to a variety of factors such as ligand sterics and basicity, the lead?s lone pair activity is difficult to predict, thus inhibiting efforts to solve issues of lead toxicity, whether it involves designing specific biological chelating agents or removing lead from contaminated soil and water. A comprehensive chemical understanding of lone pair activity can evolve from studies of lead-containing compounds in which ligand characteristics are systematically varied and the resulting changes in lone pair activity carefully monitored. A two-dimensional Pb(II) polymer, synthesized by Nordell et al., Cui et al., and Shi et al., presents an opportunity for a systematic study: the lone pair is stereochemically active when Cl is bound to lead, but not when Br or I are. The PI and host are employing a theoretical approach, combining high-level density functional theory calculations with qualitative, semi-empirical extended Hückel molecular orbital calculations, to identify lone pair location and composition, and to connect the lone pair (in)activity in these two-dimensional polymers with that seen in the lead hexahalides.
During this post-doctoral fellowship, the PI will also teach chemistry and a science communication course at an undergraduate institution, the newly established Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Kerala. Moreover, she will participate in science outreach activities with the Karnataka Rajya Vijnana Parishat NGO, publish articles in Resonance, an educational journal produced by the Indian Academy of Sciences, and establish long-term science and outreach collaborations with Indian researchers and educators.
