Williamsville Native Rebecca Leising Earns Summer Research Award

EASTON, MA (04/10/2012)(readMedia)-- Williamsville native Rebecca Leising will be one of 50 students from Stonehill College working with faculty members at the College this summer on research projects through the Stonehill Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) program. The SURE Program provides students with an opportunity to perform significant, publishable research under the guidance of an experienced faculty researcher.

Leising, a sophomore chemistry major at Stonehill, along with one other student, will work with Leon Tilley, associate professor of Chemistry, on Investigation of Electron-withdrawing Substituents in the Synthesis of Cyclopropanes, Bicyclobutanes, and Tetrahedranes.

The long-term goal of the research is to synthesize tetrahedrane, however each student will be responsible for a different component of accomplishing this goal. Leising will be working to synthesize and solvolyze cyclopropanes and bicyclobutanes. As a group, they plan to study the scope of the electron withdrawing effects; undertake kinetics studies, and apply this effect to the synthesis of these systems. They plan to present their findings at a future American Chemical Society national meeting.

The scholars and their faculty mentors are the 17th group to work under the Stonehill Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) program. SURE Scholars will engage in weekly meetings to discuss the progress of their projects and other topics of general interest, and will be paid a stipend for their full-time service. All SURE Scholars will present summaries of their summer's work at an all-campus poster session in the early fall.

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