Orion Staples Wins Undergraduate Research Award

Orion Staples (left) and Dr. Andrew Sutton were jointly honored with the ACS Undergraduate Research Award as student and preceptor.

Orion Staples of the Inorganic, Isotope, and Actinide Chemistry group received the 2017 American Chemical Society Division of Inorganic Chemistry Undergraduate Research Award

This award is given to recognize the collaborative research of an outstanding North American undergraduate student and her or his preceptor in the field of inorganic chemistry. His mentor Dr. Andrew Sutton was also honored as preceptor. Staples will receive $1,000 and a plaque and Sutton, as his mentor, will receive a plaque for permanent display at LANL. The award ceremony was held at the Spring 2018 National ACS Meeting in New Orleans, which took place on March 18^th.

Staples was selected for this award for his exemplary contributions to research projects in the group during the summer of 2017. His initial work was focused in support of an externally funded project through DOE-EERE’s (Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy) BioEnergy Technology Office (BETO) to develop new fuels and chemicals derived from biomass.

Prior to his arrival the team used acetone as a bio-derived building block to produce commodity fuels and chemicals. Staples saw the potential for this type of chemical application and focused on using ethanol instead of acetone. He then developed a successful scheme that dehydrogenates ethanol to acetaldehyde and by subtle changes in the reaction conditions can again make diesel, gasoline, and commodity chemicals. His new scheme dramatically increased yields, and he performed more than 100 reactions with full analysis while learning new spectroscopic techniques. His work was included in a full patent application and a paper in the journal Green Chemistry.

Staples also won a 2017 Distinguished Student Award from LANL. He graduated from the University of New Mexico in December and is currently a postbac student at LANL. He will be entering the graduate program at the University of Pennsylvania in July.
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