Our program centers around the discovery of catalytic carbon-carbon and carbon-heteroatom bond forming reactions based on C-H activation.  Target transformations are selected to enable 1) the use of simple and abundant starting materials such as aliphatic acids, amines and alcohols, and 2) disconnections that drastically shorten the synthesis of a class of biologically active compounds.

Ultimately, we hope to develop catalytic reactions to parallel enzymatic transformations in terms of reactivity and selectivity. To achieve this goal, our research activities are directed towards the following main aspects: catalysis, chemoselectivity, enantioselectivity and synthetic applications.


Catalysis

Development of practical approaches to achieve turnovers for metal-catalyzed C-H functionalizations is one of the most important tasks in our research program.
We have exploited a number of redox systems to close the catalytic cycle, namely, Pd(II)/Pd(IV), Pd(II)/Pd(0) and Cu(II)/Cu(0) catalysis.

Chemoselectivity

Since a variety of C-H bonds in synthetically useful substrates are potentially reactive with a C-H activation catalyst, it is crucial to achieve high selectivity in order to apply these catalytic transformations to synthesis.

Enantioselectivity