I travelled to the Symposium on Molecular Chirality in Chiba in Japan from 10th to 12th May 2018, feeling very enthusiastic to learn about the latest scientific advances from Japanese community on the chirality at the conference. Although the conference is a domestic annual event in Japan, approximately 200 researchers in the field of organic synthesis and crystal chemistry attend to the conference every year to activate and make the Japanese community on the chirality greater and greater.
There was 1 award lecture, 8 invited lecture, 16 oral presentations and 63 poster presentations in two days. Fortunately, Prof. Gerard Coquerel, the director of SMS Laboratory in University of Rouen Normandy, was invited to conduct the invited lecture in the conference, and gave me a nice opportunity to present my research results.
Prof. Kenji Monde (http://altair.sci.hokudai.ac.jp/infchb/index.html) who works at Hokkaido University was awarded Molecular Chirality Award with his contribution of study on vibrational circular dichromism (VCD) spectroscopy[1] to wide research field involving chirality. (http://www.camelianet.com/chiral/) The award lecture was conducted under this title ‘Development of novel chiroptical technique for determination of absolute configurations by vibrational circular dichromism.’ His wonderful talk was really impressing and let us easily inspire the possibility of wide application of VCD spectroscopy to chirality research. Indeed, very recently its methodology for the measurement of enantiomeric excess in chiral compounds in solid phase was reported, which technique is definitely helpful for our network.
In invited lectures, diverse lectures with keyword of ‘chirality’ were held. For example, Prof. Yujiro Hayashi (http://www.ykbsc.chem.tohoku.ac.jp/), who works in Tohoku University, is really organic chemist from viewpoint of his achievements, but his chemistry is oriented practicality in process field. One of his great achievements is concept of ‘Pot-economy.’ Actually, he reported one-pot synthesis of Tamiflu (oseltamivir). [2]
In the poster session, I talked about my research results. It was really fruitful time to have a lot of discussion with researchers in the different field of crystallization. During the banquet that evening, I had a nice opportunity to talk with Prof. Monde and he gave me a lot of advice on my research. Since I had been having some good luck at that time, I won the poster award in the end. After the conference, Prof. Masami Sakamoto who was organizer of the conference invited me to go to dinner with invited professors. We enjoyed relax time with scientific talk in the OKONOMIYAKI[3] restaurant.
I would to extend my appreciation to my supervisors, CORE network and my colleagues in France.
[1] Briefly speaking, VCD spectroscopy can be explained as CD spectroscopy in IR region. (CD spectroscopy use UV-Vis region in general.) Normally, CD spectrum show broad peaks. In contrast VCD spectrum has relatively sharp peaks, allowing us to determine the absolute structure on stereogenic center in particular oily compound which cannot be measured single crystal X-ray diffraction.
[2] (a) T. Mukaiyama, H. Ishikawa, H. Koshino, Y. Hayashi, Chem. – A Eur. J. 2013, 19, 17789–17800. (b) H. Ishikawa, T. Suzuki, Y. Hayashi, Angew. Chemie Int. Ed. 2009, 48, 1304–1307.
[3] OKONOMIYAKI is pancake containing a variety of ingredients such as meat, octopus, squid, shrimp, and cheese and so on. You can ask more details to your Japanese friend, they may hold OKONOMIYAKI party…
Ryusei Oketani
Laboratoire Sciences et Méthodes Séparatives
University of Rouen, France
ryusei.oketani@etu.univ-rouen.fr
Ryusei joined the CORE-ITN in January 2017. He graduated in 2016 with an M.A. Kyoto Univ., Japan “Theoretical and Experimental Study on Hydrogen Storage Behavior of Metalloporphyrin Crystals”. His research interests include theoretical and experimental study on storing energy gas into organic molecular crystals / Study on applying TiO2 photocatalytic reaction to organic syntheses / Optimization of Second Order Asymmetric Transformation.
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