William A. Boulanger

Professor Boulanger runs the High Pressure Facility located in the penthouse of Roger Adams Labs and trains students wanting to use the facility. Professor Boulanger also is a source of information for non-standard chemical techniques such as pyrolysis, flow reactions, MPLC, process chemistry, heterogenous hydrogenations, large scale reactions, spinning band or other special distillations, etc. He also makes a few appearances in the famous 536 doughnut class on such topics as hydrogenation, lab techniques, and the topics above.

Professor Boulanger initiated research while still in high school in the late 60s, working on the synthesis of bicyclobutane. He has worked as a discovery Chemist in Medicinal Chemistry at Abbott Labs in Antiinflammatories, a discovery group leader in Plant Growth Regulators and Insecticides at FMC, Princeton, and was an early member of Medichem (now deCode) and Albany Molecular Research. While at MediChem, he enjoyed a guest appointment at Argonne National Laboratories looking at designing mechanism-based non-active site inhibitors of HIV protease. Professor Boulanger retired from AMRI in 2000 to start Obiter Research, LLC located in Champaign. He is the sole owner. Obiter produces high-end research chemicals for researchers in Academia and Industry, including large Pharma. Professor Boulanger is the primary teacher in Obiter's new program of Residency in Industrial and Medicinal Chemistry, where the hands-on skills training required by industry but not taught in academia are provided in a two-year post-doctoral position.