Stories of Coherence: From Vibronic to Electronic Phenomena A robust understanding of chemical reactivity in excited states is essential for designing and discovering new ways of harnessing energy flow at the atomic and molecular level. Photo-induced coherent processes, which utilize atomic or molecular motions moving with a well-defined phase relationship, may enhance control over important […]
Abstract: The seminar will describe our efforts towards the development of scalable, mild, and general electrosynthetic methodologies for C–C and C–N/X coupling reactions. These electrosynthetic methodologies are largely possible because of a synergy between redox-active mediators developed by the energy storage community and transition metal catalysts. It will be shown that yields from electrocatalytic reactions […]
"Untangling Amyloid: Slowing the Progression of Type 2 Diabetes"
“Self-assembly of colloidal diamond for photonics”
Abstract: Our laboratory focuses on the development of small molecule ligands and enzymatic inhibitors of proteins that interact with nucleic acids. We utilize biophysical and biochemical assays to screen chemical libraries to discover protein-binding ligands, which are then optimized using iterative rounds of molecular design, synthesis, and biological evaluation. Our overarching goals are to develop […]
Abstract: The indole diterpenoids constitute a family of natural products that exhibit potent and selective Big Potassium (BK) ion channel inhibition. We have developed a unified synthetic strategy towards the indole diterpenoid class, culminating in the total synthesis of several representative congeners, including paspaline A and emindole PB. Density functional theory calculations are utilized to […]
“Structure-function relationship of an unstructured protein - the alpha-Synuclein case”
“Precision Synthesis of Quantum Material Building Blocks”
Challenging Problems in Quantum Chemistry: How to Diagnose Them and How to Tackle Them Quantum chemistry has become an indispensable tool in revealing the microscopic details of molecules and materials such as barrier heights, interaction energies, and correlation functions. The nature of electronic correlation is sometimes controversial, obscuring the optimal choice of quantum chemistry methods […]
Abstract: This lecture will describe recent developments in our efforts to develop catalysts for asymmetric reactions, in particular for the preparation of densely functionalized, stereochemically complex structures. Over time, our foci have been on enantioselectivity, site-selectivity and chemoselectivity. In much of our current work, we are studying issues of enantioselectivity as a prelude to the […]
“Characterization of RquA – a novel enzyme used in microbial rhodoquinone biosynthesis”
Abstract: Chemical reactivity can be utilized in many ways, including to improve synthetic access to new molecules and to devise tools to advance biomedicine. ‘Synthesis and catalysis’ are two themes interwoven throughout this presentation, which describes 1) the development of short synthetic routes to (–)-picrotoxinin, (–)-picrotin, and 5-methyl-picrotoxinin enabled by a late-stage strong-bond activation strategy for […]
