COLLABORATION IN BASIC SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING (COBASE)

Rajender Varma (left) and Marijan Kocevar in Ljubljana

Rajender Varma traveled to Slovenia for five weeks in summer 1999. His host in Slovakia was Marijan Kocevar of the University of Ljubljana, Department of Organic Chemistry. The general aim of this project was to develop environmentally friendly solvent-free processes that proceed rapidly with little wasteful by-product formation. This general objective was achieved by designing synthetic routes that utilize in situ generated reactive intermediates that rapidly provide the target compounds efficiently in one-pot operation. Further exploration was done in exploiting multi-component reactions that involve two or three reactants in an approach, which is adaptable to combinatorial synthesis of a library of heterocyclic molecules. Varma reports that the Department of Chemistry at the University of Ljubljana is a leader in the synthesis of oxygen and nitrogen heterocyclic compounds. The quality of research activities is reported to be very good and would be comparable to an average university in the West. Varma and Kocevar completed 26 initial experiments in the area of synthesis of heterocyclic systems. The results from these experiments may be explored for possible elaboration into a proposal.