Modern materials with technologically advanced properties, and new pharmaceutical compounds to treat human disease, are all constructed through the combination of relatively small building blocks into larger and more complex structures. These combinations are limited by the types of small building blocks available. Thus, the ability to construct new advanced materials and to generate new pharmaceuticals is, in turn, limited by the variety of small building blocks available. In this project, Dr. Blum is developing new processes to create classes of new building blocks. These new building blocks are designed to be combined and thus to construct larger, complex materials and therapeutic agents with improved properties. The new processes involve sustainable approaches to synthesis by using Earth-abundant additives or, in some cases, by being additive-free. Dr. Blum is the director of a teacher-training program that provides current advanced students at the University of California, Irvine, with pedagogical training, mentorship, and skills for teaching the next generation of college students. This teacher-training program focuses on training in effective classroom instruction in the chemical sciences, including the instruction of scientific concepts developed in the research laboratory.
With funding from the Chemical Synthesis Program in the Chemistry Division of the National Science foundation, Dr. Blum of the University of California, Irvine, is developing new boron-heteroatom addition reactions. The products from these reactions are borylated building blocks that are useful for drug discovery and materials synthesis. These reactions develop the previously unknown addition chemistry of boron-oxygen sigma bonds to carbon-carbon pi bonds, and extend this addition chemistry to boron-nitrogen addition reactions. Mechanistically distinct formal addition reactions of the equivalents of boron/oxygen, boron/nitrogen, and boron/sulfur are also being developed to access similar product classes and the two methods (direct and formal) are compared for efficiency. Studies include the development of these reactions with catalyst-free conditions, which provide a more sustainable approach than alternative traditional precious-metal-catalyzed borylation strategies. Dr. Blum is the director of a teacher-training program that provides current Ph.D. students at the University of California, Irvine, with pedagogical training, mentorship, and skills for teaching the next generation of college students. This teacher-training program focuses on training in effective classroom instruction in the chemical sciences, including the instruction of scientific concepts developed in the research laboratory.
