The hard work of Helen Xia ’24, Eric Zhou ’27, and Bianca Bicalho ’22 recently paid off in a publication in Synthetic Communications describing the alkylation of indoles, benzofurans, furans, and thiophenes with alkyl acetates. This TMSOTf-promoted chemistry was discovered, developed, and expanded over the past three years. Helen in particular poured gallons of sweat into the project, which eventually produced 33 examples of successful alkylations. Bianca helped pioneer the acetate scope and Eric made major contributions in responding to reviewer questions and requests, but it was Helen who steered this project for almost its full duration, providing innovation and creativity in addition to muscle.
Congrats to all these hard-working students! The best part is that this work is just the foundation of more things to come with our indole chemistry.
Just click here for a link to the paper.