Compound Interest

by Lisa Watts

Name: Daniel Skully
Hometown: Reynoldsburg, Ohio
Major: Chemistry
I.S. Title: Progress Toward the Synthesis of a Model Electroluminescent Polymer
Advisor: Paul Bonvallet

Dan Skully’s work at his lab bench in Severance Chemistry this past year didn’t end up the way he hoped, with a new light-emitting compound in hand. But he knows his efforts hold a place on a continuum of scientific research into polymers, the natural or synthetic compounds that range from plastics to starches.

The continuum began in 1977, when scientists from three universities published the Nobel Prize-winning discovery that the polymer polyacetylene can conduct electricity under certain conditions. Later work revealed that a related polymer, PPV, could conduct electricity and emit light, showing promise as a display material for anything from digital watches to computer monitors.

Skully’s quest was to make PPV easier to manipulate, able to emit light more efficiently and in different colors. He wanted to create a simple derivative of the polymer that contained a crown ether, a ring-shaped receptor. Working with those materials was complicated and expensive, so he came up with a "faux" crown ether-polymer synthesis.

"It’s like in biology, when you use a simple organism to learn about humans, or bacteria to learn about more complicated organisms," Skully explains.

The research progressed in spurts. "The first reaction worked like a charm, the second one didn’t work at all. You spend a lot of time putting something together, you let it sit for a week, then you run an analysis and get nothing. We tried a few times — it’s kind of disheartening."

Paul Bonvallet, Skully’s adviser, considers his student’s work a great success.

"I told him, ‘You’re not going to have a wristwatch with these molecules in it by the end of the semester,’" Bonvallet says. "But Dan met the challenges in the way that real researchers do — when he hit a stumbling block, a reaction where nothing happened, he went back to the books and found another substance" — and he made several original compounds. In June summer research students were already picking up where Skully left off.

Skully was famous in the halls of Severance for breezing through every course the department offered. But Bonvallet was equally impressed by Skully’s perspective. "Dan sees the connection between all of the sub-disciplines in chemistry. He just really gets it."

A tight end on the football team his first two years, Skully knew he should give up the sport after two concussions. He discovered tae kwon do at a studio down the road. The martial art classes "got me off campus, kept me in shape, and helped me to develop focus" — and left him close to earning his black belt.

The son of Wooster chemistry majors (Robert ’76 and Joan Pedersen Skully ’75), Skully is thinking about medical school. He realizes that he would rather work with people than in a lab. Ever balanced, he’s taking a year to work and travel because "I’d rather be sane at the end of all that education."