9312709 Sweigart This award provides funds to permit Dr. Dwight A. Sweigart, Department of Chemistry, Brown University, to pursue with Dr. Young K. Chung, Department of Chemistry, Seoul National University, Korea, for 24 months, a program of cooperative research involving physical and synthetic studies of organometallic electrophiles. The project will include both organometallic synthesis and electrochemistry. The synthetic studies will involve the use of manganese to (1) convert arenes to difunctionalized optically pure cyclohexadienes and (2) produce new functionalized derivatives of indoles, steroids, and natural products related to vitamins D and K. The electrochemical part of the research is designed to study the reactivity of 17- and 19-electron organometallic radicals with respect to ligand substitution and other transformations. The proposed research, if successful, will be of significant interest to a range of chemists, including those concerned with organic synthesis in the natural products and drug fields. The PI and his Korean collaborator are highly respected chemists in the fields of this research. Their expertise is complementary. Dr. Chung's group is expert in a wide range of synthetic procedures and will be responsible for perhaps two thirds of the synthetic work. The PI's group will do perhaps one third of the synthetic work and most of the electrochemical and computer work. The collaborators will be assisted by three U.S. graduate students supported by this grant and several Korean graduate students. This project is relevant to the objectives of the U.S.- Korea Cooperative Science Program which seeks to increase the level of cooperation between U.S. and Korean scientists and engineers through the exchange of scientific information, ideas, skills, and techniques and through collaboration on problems of mutual benefit. Korean participation in the project is supported by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF). This project adds an international cooperative dimension to the PI's research under NSF Grant No. CHE-8821588. ***
