This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
This project explores reaction cascades that lead to facile C-H bond functionalization. The focus is on studying reaction cascades that are initiated by intra- or intermolecular hydride shift events that result in the formation of an electrophile/nucleophile pair. Subsequent combination of electrophile and nucleophile leads to the rapid increase of molecular complexity without the generation of byproducts. The use of catalytic approaches is an integral part of these investigations as a means of lowering activation barriers and to allow for the discovery of yet unknown rearrangements of broad applicability. An important goal is the development of catalytic enantioselective variants of hydride shift reactions.
With this award, the Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry Program is supporting the research of Professor Daniel Seidel of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Professor Seidel's research efforts revolve around the development of facile methods for organic synthesis with an emphasis on asymmetric catalysis. Such chemistry will contribute to environmentally benign methods for chemical synthesis. The successful development of the methodology will provide rapid access to valuable compounds of relevance to the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries. Furthermore, this project provides an ideal training ground to prepare the next generation of researchers in the chemical sciences.
