Nelius Gathondu, Susan Citrak, and Beth Kochly Dana Dav is
they’ve encountered a problem while I was gone—but they’ve
known chemical reactions, so that industrial and commercial
figured it out themselves or worked around it.”
labs can begin to use ionic liquids with an understanding of how
In other words, these undergraduate chemistry majors get to experience the volatile world of research for themselves.
they may behave differently. Kochly recently submitted a paper, coauthored with former
“They get excited when what’s happening is going the way we
students Todd Rabkin-Golden, post-bac pre-med ’11, and Seham
predicted,” Kochly says of her lab assistants, “but they get even
Afaghani ’11 based on research conducted at Mills in 2010, for
more excited when it’s not going as predicted.”
publication in The Journal of Organic Chemistry.
Gathondu notes the balance of support and freedom Kochly
Gathondu and Citrak worked over the summer to replicate
provides in the lab. “From week one, Professor Kochly was there
the results of the 2010 research. Together, they spent days in
for us,” she says. “She lets you make mistakes and come up with
the lab watching over reactions that took hours to complete,
your own ideas, and if there’s something wrong with reaction
learning firsthand that the day-to-day experience of lab work
she’ll listen.”
requires boundless patience. But the unusual nature of the work
Kochly and her students are investigating reactions involving
set it apart from typical, and typically predictable, course labs.
ionic liquids. Essentially salts that are liquid at room tempera-
“One day we were all excited to look at the reaction and it was
ture, ionic liquids are viscous, non-volatile solvents that can be
just a flat line,” says Citrak. “We had been so excited and hyped
substituted for more volatile solvents that are typically used. Her
up. We came back fresh on Monday and had a new insight on
research looks at the effects of these “green” solvents in well-
why it didn’t work. That was an accomplishment in itself. Having WINTER 2013
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