The research in my group focuses on the development of new catalytic methods for organic synthesis. While many new synthetic methods are developed every year, few ever become widely used outside the laboratory they were developed in. The reason for this is often that the overall synthetic scheme is just less efficient than what was already available – starting materials or catalysts are difficult to handle, expensive, or both. In order to create reactions that will find immediate use in academia and industry, we are developing new couplings of readily available starting materials. Integral to the development process are the study of the proposed reaction mechanisms and the synthesis of potential catalytic intermediates.
Even the relatively efficient process syntheses of active pharmaceutical ingredients require, on average, eight steps. To further improve the overall efficiency at this stage requires methods that avoid purification and isolation steps. Many chemists use “one-pot” procedures to conduct two or more reactions sequentially in a single flask. A potentially more powerful strategy is running two or more reactions concurrently in a single flask, dubbed “concurrent tandem catalysis.” Inspired by nature, my group seeks to create abiotic megasynthases that will perform a programmed series of reactions and allow for true multistep synthesis in a single flask. To accomplish this goal, we will draw upon the tools of various chemistry disciplines (bioorganic, supermolecular, organic, and inorganic) to create and study these synthases.