Prof. Stacy O'Reilly

My name is Stacy O'Reilly and I am a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Butler University.

My research involves a synthesis of molybdenum and tungsten organometallic compounds that have unusual NMR spectrum. In particular, I see hydrogens with as much as five PPM chemical shifts and I'm trying to figure out why.

One of the things that makes Butler different than a research 1 institution is the role of our research is really in student learning. I do research to not just to push science forward, but also to help students understand what research means. The organometallic work that I do is teaching students the basic skills that they would need to do organometallic research in industry or in a research program, but it's partially about teaching the skills, not just pushing forward science.

On campus right now, we have three different Erlab products. We've got the filtered fume hoods that we use in the organic and general chemistry teaching laboratories. We also have the filtered hoods in a couple of our research laboratories. We use them for making NMRs, doing column chromatography, smaller jobs like that. We also have rotovap enclosures that we use heavily in the teaching laboratories and in the research laboratories. The rotovap enclosures have worked wonderfully for taking the rotovaps off the countertop and giving them some sort of filtered environment so you're not breathing anything that comes out of the rotovap. We also have a Halo which we have installed over our solvent system for when we particularly do the fills on the solvent system and get solvent. It's not in a hood at all, so it introduces the organic vapors directly to the air and it helps with maintaining a working environment in that space as well.

The filtered hoods allowed us a way to provide a safer working environment in a way that was cost-effective and in a matter of, well, with the time that we had to do the remodel, that was time effective as well.

It's actually a really interesting time to be at Butler. We are breaking ground and working on a $100 million renovation to the science teaching complex. And as part of the group that was able to redesign and rethink our teaching and research laboratories moving forward, we have decided to go with a combination of filtered and ducted hoods.

I generate carbon monoxide gas in my research. I have to have a ducted hood. It will always be necessary for me to be able to do some of my work in a ducted hood. But the filtered hoods make a great option for undergraduate chemistry teaching laboratories where they're working with things that we have better control over that we know are safer, ether, THF, hexanes. So, moving forward, we're excited about moving into a facility where we're going to have a combination of the filtered hoods for applications where they are appropriate, and in the ducted hoods for places where that's going to be appropriate.