Synform Issue 2013/3

Abstract

Which aspects of your academic work do you like the most? The last two weeks were quite mixed and intense for me; normally I do not have much teaching (don't tell it to my College though...) but in the last few days I had to mark a few exams and I dealt with some other teaching-related activity too. Then, I organized a one-day workshop with ca. 50 attendees. I have also been finalizing a grant application, drafting a couple of manuscripts, evaluated several grant applications and a couple of manuscripts, dealt with the usual supervision of my postgraduate students and postdocs. Then, I did quite a lot of 'administration' work connected with the fact that I am directing two research centers of my university. And obviously I took care of SYN-FORM. Plus some other miscellaneous stuff. Luckily, I did not have to travel. But, unfortunately, I had very little time for keeping myself up-to-date with the literature, which is something that really annoys me. That's because studying the literature and designing new experiments and projects is by far my favorite activity, I really love browsing journals online and getting inspiration and ideas for new research endeavors. I guess many of you will agree that this is what really makes our work special, together with the excitement of seeing our research plans materialized into exciting experimental results, expected or not (which sometimes is even better!). And I suspect this sentiment is also shared by the researchers whose work is featured in this new issue of SYN-FORM, which includes the following SYNSTORIES: the Pd-catalyzed C-H γ-arylation of α-amino acids reported by J. C. Carretero (Spain); a novel stereoselective approach to all-carbon quaternary stereocenters catalyzed by peptides, discovered by K. Kudo (Japan); a novel synthetic approach to βand γ-hydroxy sulfides developed by J. Leazer (USA); the FEATURED SYNSTORY on the highly potent toxic payloads for targeted chemotherapy developed by P. Lazzari and his company (Italy). Enjoy your reading! Editor of SYNFORM SYNFORM A28 IN THIS ISSUE SYNSTORIES Palladium-Catalyzed N-(2-Pyridyl)sulfonyl-Directed C(sp 3)-H γ-Arylation of Amino Acid Derivatives. .