Retro(synthesis) is back in fashion
‘SnAZzy Synthesisers’ take first place at the 4th National Retrosynthesis Competition. Dr David Alker reports from the event, organised by our Heterocyclic and Synthesis Interest Group in collaboration with the SCI Young Chemists’ Panel, and held at the SCI headquarters in Belgrave Square, London.
On 10 March 2017, the SCI headquarters hosted a celebration of organic chemistry for the final of the 4th National Retrosynthesis Competition. This event was jointly organised by members of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Heterocyclic and Synthesis Group and the Fine Chemicals Group and Young Chemists Panel of the SCI, under the leadership of Dr Rob Wybrow from Syngenta, UK.
From the 40 teams who entered the preliminary round in December, ten were selected for the final by the judging panel Dr Ross Denton, University of Nottingham; Professor Paul Davies, University of Birmingham; Dr Robin Attrill, GSK; and Dr Sharan Bagal, AstraZeneca. The finalists were drawn from a broad cross-section of chemistry-based organisations, including universities and academic institutions, pharmaceutical companies, contract research organisations, and the agrochemicals sector. At the final, teams presented their synthetic strategies for the as yet un-synthesised natural product eucalrobusone D. Teams also answered questions from the audience and judges that challenged their reasoning and route selection.
The winning team was ‘SnaAZzy Synthesisers’ from AstraZeneca and the runners up were ‘Dysfunctional Group’ from the University of St. Andrews. ‘We Mean Bismuth’ from the University of Oxford took third place and special commendation from the judges was also made to ‘Chapel Team’ from company Concept, for a very valiant effort.
The organising committee would like to thank all of the teams who entered the competition for their contributions as well as the judges, guests, attendees, sponsors and exhibitors for their significant input into the event. We would particularly like to thank the SCI for their generous support for this year’s competition, which included the donation of a year’s membership to all the members of the winning team and e-memberships to the runners-up. Based on enthusiastic positive feedback from participants and special guests on the day, the competition was hugely successful, underlining the key central importance of synthetic organic chemistry in both fundamental and applied research in the UK.
Taking that positive momentum forwards, the organising committee has already begun their planning for the 5th National Retrosynthesis Competition, to be held in early March 2018. For further details on the next competition follow us on Twitter @UKRetroComp and LinkedIn.
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