Dana Hicks

Dana Hicks

Biography

Dana Hicks is a senior at Macalester College studying chemistry with a minor in physics and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. Since their sophomore year, they have served asa supplemental instructor (SI) for general chemistry at Macalester College, providing students with additional opportunities outside of lectures to gain a deeper understanding of foundational concepts in chemistry. They believe in making higher education accessible to all students and in building connections across academic disciplines, goals they hope to continue advocating for as a professor one day. As a student, they have developed an interest in exploring the open questions in energetic conversion, quantum information science, molecular sensing, and magnetism through a’make-it-and-break-it’ research approach. This strategy leverages the power of chemical synthesis to design exemplar molecular systems that demonstrate a specific phenomenon, then dissects these systems to investigate the quantum and classical dynamics that shape that phenomenon. Dana has participated in a wide range of research projects across various chemical fields and has developed a versatile set of skills in synthetic, computational, and experimental techniques as an undergraduate, which they plan to further develop in graduate school.

Abstract

Investigating the Reactive Profiles of Carbene-Stabilized Doubly Boron-Doped Indenofluorenes

The activation of inert bonds enables the sustainable production of valuable chemical products from abundant feedstocks. Historically, this activation has relied on transition-metal catalysts due to their ability to efficiently coordinate to various substrates and their wide range of accessible oxidation states. Recently, however, there has been growing interest in replacing these expensive and potentially environmentally harmful transition-metal catalysts with main-group element-based compounds that can mimic transition-metal-like bond activation mechanisms. Doubly boron-doped indenofluorenes (DBIFs), pursued by the Gilliard lab, are promising molecular platforms for such applications. Incorporating two electron-deficient boron atoms into the indenofluorene(IF) framework offers the ability to control the redox reactivity of these DBIF derivatives through strategic ligand design and offers the potential for cooperative reactivity between the boron centers. Herein, we present the synthesis of two contrasting DBIF regioisomers and explore the differences in reaction pathways accessible to their biradicals and dianions when stabilized by different carbene ligands. Through this work, air-sensitive anionic and radical states of each isomer were isolated, and spectral crystallographic analysis of their reaction products was performed. The resulting compounds help to illuminate DBIFs’ potential to activate inert small molecules and serve as building blocks for other doubly boron-doped polycyclic compounds.