Our Research
Homogeneous Catalysis
We seek to harness the power of homogeneous catalysis to unlock robust processes for the chemo-, regio-, and enantioselective transformation of sustainable feedstock chemicals to useful and diverse building blocks for the pharmaceutical, agrochemical, and fine chemical industries. We design new ligands to tune the stability and reactivity of these catalysts as well as repurposing commercially available complexes that have not yet been widely utilised in catalytic organic synthesis. When developing these processes, we are guided by green chemistry tools, such as solvent selection guides, and benchmark our processes using sustainability metrics (PMI, E-Factor, etc.), in the pursuit of environmentally benign syntheses.
Mechanistic Studies
We integrate classical physical organic chemistry with state-of-the-art online spectroscopic techniques to inform the design of superior-performing catalysts. By employing non-destructive online spectroscopy approaches, such as FlowNMR and FlowIR, we can rapidly generate kinetics datasets for a given process. These kinetic datasets, in combination with DFT computational studies, enable us to build structure activity relationships for a suite of catalysts for any given transformation. This data-driven approach allows for the expedited optimisation of catalyst structure and reaction conditions, limiting the amount of waste produced through unnecessary catalyst synthesis and superfluous reaction condition screening.
Polymer Backbone Editing
The advances in catalytic methodology development described above will drive and complement our efforts in developing new processes for polymer backbone editing. Post-polymerisation modification has traditionally focused on modifications of the polymer periphery (side chains and end groups) while the polymer backbone remains unaltered. We are developing novel synthetic methods to modify the polymer backbone precisely and selectively thereby significantly altering the polymer’s functionality and lifecycle.