Total Synthesis: A topic of choice for PhD

The doctor of philosophy, in short PhD, is the highest academic degree considered globally, which involves completion of a set of tasks as per the regulations of particular University. To begin with, choosing a right topic for your PhD dissertation is one of the fundamental tasks. The topic one chooses should be unique, different and realistic, having tremendous research scope for one’s future career. Usually it is advisable to go through previous research records of that particular research group such as theses, research reports or publications and frame a research topic that is continuation of unsolved or partially completed previous research problem. There is also chance that the supervisor may design some interesting topic for you, that may or may not relates to his/her ongoing funded research project. Overall, it is critical step on PhD course.

When it comes to Organic chemistry, there are multiple career options post PhD. So the choice of a research topic should be in such a way that, it should be a foundation for diverse career options, giving wholesome training of 4-5 years to improve skillsets and theoretical knowledge of the graduate student. In that sense, Total synthesis of natural products can be considered as the great choice of topic. As it is known that total synthesis of natural products is a complete synthesis of natural products which are known to be complex molecules bearing chiral centers and diverse functional groups. Considering a natural product molecule and working on its total or partial synthesis not only gives the knowledge about retrosynthesis, but also it gives exposure to handling various reagents, catalysts, bond formation/bond breaking reactions, functional group transformations and also gaining experience in performing several named reactions. Starting from designing a synthetic route on a paper to setting a reaction to isolating and purifying the product, there are n-number of important steps and techniques that one needed to get trained, if he/she wants to make career in organic chemistry. In other words, natural product synthesis is the plethora of knowledge as per as organic synthesis is considered. Therefore, when one comes out after finishing the PhD course in this core topic, he/she will gain a complete training package of both theoretical and practical aspects of synthetic organic chemistry, which is basic need for both academic as well as industrial career. Having obtained with this basic training, one can easily move to different applied research areas of organic chemistry, if one desires to go for Postdoc or as faculty or as industrial chemist.