Honors Student Wins National Award for 'Green' Approach to Organic Chemistry

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Spencer Shinabery works on a reaction in the laboratory (GotSuggPhoto).

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – University of Arkansas Honors College student Ryan Spencer Shinabery has won a prestigious fellowship for his effort to create a completely new, “green” method for the development of medicines. Shinabery is a junior chemistry major in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and one of 14 students selected from across the nation to receive a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship from the American Chemical Society’s Division of Organic Chemistry.

The $5,000 fellowship will fund Shinabery’s second summer of research in the laboratory of his honors faculty mentor, Nan Zheng, an assistant professor of chemistry. The award builds on National Institutes of Health grant funding that Shinabery received last summer and moves him closer to developing photocatalysis for organic synthesis, the subject of his honors thesis. 

The fellowship is well deserved, Nan Zheng said.

“Spencer is using sunlight to develop a more efficient process that is also new chemistry, never done before,” Zheng said. “The bicyclic heterocycles that he is working on are hard to make. He is working to synthesize specific molecules and control their stereochemistry, which will be very interesting to pharmaceutical companies.”

Shinabery underplays what he has accomplished so far, focusing on the fact that solar energy is free, renewable and “greener” than the harsh chemicals commonly used to spark reactions.

“I liken our job to toolmakers – we come up with ways of doing various things and it’s up to the synthetic chemists to run with it,” he said. He’s looking forward to getting more lab experience this summer, which he says is critical both in terms of nuts and bolts know-how and confidence.

“You’re so frustrated when you’re getting started – you can’t seem to get things right, and you see the grad students flowing through it,” Shinabery said. “It just takes time and experience – it can’t be taught!”

Zheng said that his entire lab team is now working on research stemming from the progress Shinabery made on a difficult reaction last summer.

“Spencer is very talented – he’s capable of independent research as an undergraduate, and that’s unusual in this field,” Zheng said.

Shinabery will wrap up his summer lab experience with an all-expenses paid trip to the Pfizer Global Research and Development site in Groton, Conn., where all 14 fellows will present their research findings.

“That’s what I’m really excited about,” Shinabery said. “I’ve always been interested in medicines, and it will be cool to see what they make.” Profiles of all 14 fellows will be published in a forthcoming issue of The Journal of Organic Chemistry.

“Spencer Shinabery’s work to develop more efficient, solar-powered tools for organic chemists resonates with other sustainable research initiatives being undertaken throughout the Honors College,” said Bob McMath, dean of the Honors College. “I’m pleased and proud that he has won national recognition and funding support for his research.”

In addition to the fellowship, Shinabery is the 2011 Fulbright College recipient of the Presidential Scholarship, which is awarded annually to top students in each college by the president of the University of Arkansas System. He also received the Kathy Nolan Chemistry Award and the Frederick A. Kekulé Award from the university’s department of chemistry and biochemistry earlier in his academic career. A graduate of Little Rock’s Catholic High School, Shinabery is the son of Dede and Mark Shinabery of Maumelle, Ark.