Heather A. Spinney

Heather is a postdoc in the Cummins group. Heather is an accomplished main-group chemist who earned her Ph.D. in the Burford group at Dalhousie. Prior to joining the Cummins lab, Heather was an NSERC postdoc in the Richeson group at the University of Ottawa.


Heather's arrival in the Cummins lab coincided with our acquisition (gift from Karsten Meyer) of an As4-generating apparatus. Thus, her timing was opportune for the challenging project of carrying out syntheses stemming from elemental, molecular arsenic, which is light-sensitive. As4 is also thermally unstable as a pure substance, and so cannot be isolated and stored in a bottle. Heather has focused her attentions on a scheme for generating the diatomic AsP molecule—or its tungsten pentacarbonyl complex—in solution, and under mild conditions.


Turning to transition-metal chemistry, Heather is presently studying pyridine reductive coupling chemistry utilizing a titanium(II) synthon.


Some good links:
Inorganic Syntheses / ACS Journals / ACIE














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