Join us for the next BOSSs Meeting
Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025
Time: 11:00 am - 1:00 pm EST
November Program
Michal Lahav, Senior Scientist
Weizmann Institute of Science
Daria Torodii, Postdoctoral Researcher
EPFL & Angstrom Atomic Level Structures
Manasa Yerragunta, Ph.D. Candidate
U. Houston, Vekilov and Rimer Labs
Plenary Talk
Michal Lahav, Senior Scientist
Weizmann Institute of Science
Electrochromic Nanoscale Films Made at the Weizmann Institute
Time: 11:05 am
These materials hold great promise for addressing a variety of issues, from sustainable energy solutions to advancements in communication and information transfer. Among such materials, electrochromic materials are particularly noteworthy for their ability to reversibly alter optical properties when subjected to an external voltage. We have developed a class of materials based on metal complexes that can be processed from aqueous solutions, offer a variety of colors, and exhibit metal-centered stable and reversible redox chemistry. These metal-organic materials possess a comprehensive range of electrochromic properties, including ultra-high coloration efficiencies and excellent cyclic stability. Importantly, our materials can be fabricated using green solvents and automated spray-coating, a method compatible with industrial roll-to-roll (R2R) processing. I will discuss new synthetic routes for assembling our metal complexes into chiral solid- state structures that exhibit electrochemically addressable chiroptical properties.
Short Talks
Daria Torodii, Postdoctoral Researcher
EPFL and Angstrom Atomic Level Structures
Applications of NMR crystallography for crystalline and amorphous drugs
Time: 11:45 am
Understanding chemical function, reactivity, and stability requires knowledge of atomic-level structure. Solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) enables such insights by probing local atomic environments, independent of crystallinity. In this talk, I will present how chemical shift based NMR crystallography, combined with advanced NMR methods, fast magic-angle spinning (MAS), and modern computational tools, including machine learning, can be used to determine atomic-level structures of molecular solids. In particular, I will show applications to several amorphous drug formulations, where structural features such as hydrogen bonding and conformational preferences were statistically characterised by matching experimental chemical shift distributions with predicted shifts from machine-learned models and molecular dynamics-generated structures. This approach provides valuable insights into stabilisation mechanisms in disordered systems and expands the scope of atomic-level structure determination beyond crystalline phases.
Manasa Yerragunta, Ph.D. Candidate
University of Houston, Vekilov and Rimer Labs
Solvent-Driven Shifts in Relative Polymorph Stability: A Thermodynamic Perspective
Time: 12:15 pm
Crystallization is a widely used technique in pharmaceutical manufacturing, where polymorphism plays a crucial role in determining the solubility, bioavailability, and stability of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs). A significant knowledge gap persists in understanding the influence of solvents on the stability of polymorphic forms, as it is often assumed that polymorph stability is independent of the solvent environment. Here we demonstrate that Mefenamic Acid (MFA) molecules interact differently in presence of formamide, toluene and water-dimethylformamide (DMF) mixture leading to solvent-dependent stability of polymorphs. We investigate the thermal stability of polymorphs and the thermodynamic parameters of polymorph crystallization. Our findings reveal that polymorph stability is solvent-dependent due to varying solute-solvent interactions. While the solid-solid transformation of MFA Form I (stable polymorph at ambient conditions) to MFA Form II (stable at high temperature) happens at high temperature, our results show that the solvent can stabilize MFA Form II even at lower temperatures.