All-Ireland Success for UCC Chemistry Students

14 Sep 2014

Douglas duo, Pamela and Katrina Mackey, this afternoon won All-Ireland senior camogie medals with Cork following a 2-12 to 1-09 win over Kilkenny in Croke Park.

All-star winners in 2012, Pamela and Katrina played a huge part in this afternoon's hard fought win at half back and corner forward respectively.

Next month, the pair will graduate with Chemistry with Forensic Science degrees and also begin the next step in their education when they begin a postgraduate study in the area of Organic Chemistry at UCC under the supervision of Dr. Ger McGlacken.

For her PhD, Pamela will work on the asymmetric synthesis of amino alcohols and alpha substituted ketones. Despite their prevalence in natural products and as precursors in many drugs, these synthons are difficult to access via the established protocols in organic chemistry. Pamela's PhD will be funded by The Irish Research Council.

Meanwhile, Katrina will work on Direct Arylation (DA) reactions for her PhD. Combining two aryl units to form a biaryl system is a very important process in the Pharmaceutial Industry. Well-known processes such as the Suzuki-Miyaura and Stille reactions have been extensively used for this transformation. More recently, DA reactions have been more utilised as they require less preactivation and produce less waste. Katrina will use DA methodology on so called 'privileged biological scaffolds'. Katrina's PhD will be funded by Synthesis and Solid State Pharmaceutical Cluster (SSPC).

Well done to Pamela and Katrina, from everyone in UCC Chemistry!

Photo: The Camogie Association