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Class of 2005

Alex Jacobine

Stories of Revolution

Family Chemistry

Like his father before him, Alex Jacobine '05 likes figuring out how to make life better through chemistry. After graduating from Washington College, Alex enrolled in the Ph.D. program in organic chemistry at University of New Hampshire, where his father earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1977.

Throughout his undergraduate career, Alex spent summers as a research intern with Loctite, where his dad works as an organic chemist. The company headquartered in Connecticut is known for its adhesives and chemical fasteners.

At Washington College, Alex's first research experience occurred in Professor Frank Creegan's lab, where Alex performed a series of Baeyer-Villiger oxidations—organic reactions in which a ketone is oxidized to an ester —trying to determine which side of the chemical structure would oxidize.

As part of his research group at UNH, under the leadership of Professor Chuck Zercher, Alex has been focused on the methodology of natural products—that is, developing new and efficient synthetic methods of making products that occur naturally, but that are in short supply.

He explains that many natural and synthetic products are of particular interest to biochemists pursuing chemotherapeutic research and other investigations, but there's not enough of the product for the task at hand. Alex and his colleagues synthesized the compound extracted from a fern that has some promise for its cytotoxicity. "Essentially, we made in the lab what nature makes," Alex says. Their work was published in the Journal of Organic Chemistry.

Now in his fifth and final year of graduate studies, Alex is looking for a post-doc position where he can concentrate on research. "There are lots of different ways to do things," says Alex. "It's fun and interesting to figure out the best way to do it."

Undergrad Highlights

Major: Chemistry
Thesis: "Substituent Effects in the Baeyer-Villiger Oxidation of Cyclic Aromatic Ketones"
Research Adviser: Frank J. Creegan, Ph.D.

Q & A

Hometown? Meriden, CT 06450