As of May 2022, Mr. Sean Larmore is a junior studying chemistry at the New Jersey Institute of Technology with plans to earn his Ph.D. in chemistry and aspirations to become a professor. He began his research in organic computational chemistry 2020 and was a 2021 NJIT Provost Undergraduate Research and Innovation Summer Fellow. He is one of the winners of the 2022 CME STEM Undergraduate Summer Research Scholarships.

Date of Research: May 23 – July 29
College Lab: New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), 161 Warren St., Newark, NJ 07102
Research Advisor/Professor: Prof. Pier Alexandre Champagne, NJIT

Abstract Title: Computational Study on the Reactivity of Substituted Cyclopropylcarbinyl Carbocations

Students are taught that organic reactions involving a carbocation intermediate do not exhibit any stereospecificity, however there are select examples of reactions involving nonclassical carbocations which are able to retain the stereochemistry “in memory”. The goal of this research project is to use high-level computational methods, including density functional theory, to understand how and when these reactions lose their stereochemical memory.