COMENIUS UNIVERSITY
Description:
Comenius University is located in Bratislava, Slovakia. The Faculty of Natural Sciences (FNS) is presently one of the largest faculties of Comenius University, in both the number of staff members and students. It has teaching staff of approximately 250, including 33 full professors, 90 associate professors, 125 assistants, and a further 45 researchers with the title of D.Sc. or Ph.D./C.Sc. The student population numbers approximately 2600, including nearly 400 Ph.D. scholars, of whom 140 are full-time Ph.D. students working at individual departments of the Faculty. There is a steadily increasing number of applicants for enrolment at the Faculty, with over 5906 applications for the academic year 2000/2001, of whom only 1445 could be accepted. The acceptance rate makes Comenius University highly selective. S.T. research group is well equipped with NMR instruments, chiral HPLC and chiral GC and has good access to FT IR, GC-MS instruments.
The Department of the Comenius University that will participate to the project is the Department of Organic Chemistry and in particular the research group led by Prof. Stefan Toma. The experiences with organocatalysed reactions both in traditional solvents as well as ionic liquids will be very useful to the success of the project. Ionic liquids media will be extremely useful especially in the case when reactions will be catalysed with precious, especially prepared, organocatalysts, because organocatalyst containing solutions in ionic liquids can be used in repeated reactions.
Prof. Stefan Toma from the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the Comenius University in Bratislava leads a research group, consisting of 5 University professors (2 men and 3 women) and 2 PhD students. During the last 7 years the research group was active in 3 fields: 1. Synthesis of new chiral ferrocene ligands and their immobilization on ionic liquid moiety and SiO2. In these field the group participated successfully to the FP6 project"LigBank". More than 20 new ligands were prepared and sent to LigBank. Some of the ligands were successfully tested in Pd-catalyzed allylation and Rh catalyzed hydrogenation reactions. 2. Organic reactions in ionic liquids. Several transition-metal catalysed as well as organocatalysed reactions in ionic liquids. The group was the first who published enantioselective Pd-catalyzed reactions in ionic liquids as well as the first who published organocatalyzed reaction in ionic liquids. Several other organocatalysed reactions in ionic liquids were studied and for the first time the L-proline sufonimide catalyst was studied in ionic liquids. The group also found that some Michael additions can be performed in ionic liquids without any additional catalyst. 3. Microwave chemistry and sonochemistry. Several interested papers were published on acceleration of different reactions (electrophilic and nucleophilic aromatic substitutions and Pd-catalysed coupling reactions) using such techniques. The group experiences with organocatalysed reactions, both in traditional solvents as well as ionic liquids, will be very useful to the success of the project. Ionic liquids media will be extremely useful especially in the case when reactions will be catalysed with precious, especially prepared, organocatalysts, because organocatalyst containing solutions in ionic liquids can be used in repeated reactions.
Professor Stefan Toma is a full professor of Organic Chemistry in Comenius University. He got the Ph.D in Chemistry in 1965, and he was postdoctoral fellow for 12 months in Strathclyde University (1970). He spend the entire career in Comenius University, reaching a strong international reputation in the field of organic chemistry, and recently., organocatalysis. He was invited professor in France several time in many different Universities (Grenoble, Lille, Strasbourg, Dijon, Orsay). He is an author of more than 170 papers in the field of organic chemistry.