Chemistry Seminar - Recent Advances in Rhodium-Catalyzed Reactions of Donor/Acceptor Carbenes

Title: Recent Advances in Rhodium-Catalyzed Reactions of Donor/Acceptor Carbenes

Speaker: Prof Huw Davies, Emory University

Abstract: The Davies group has had a long-standing interest in the rhodium-catalyzed reactions of donor-acceptor carbenes.  Many different types of enantioselective transformations can be conducted, the most industrially relevant are cyclopropanation and C-H functionalization.  Over the last decade, the Davies group has been actively involved in the NSF Center for Selective C-H Functionalization and more recently, the Catalysis Innovation Consortium.  These are large scale communities of academic and industrial groups, fostering an extensive collaborative research environment.  This presentation will highlight some of our recent academic and industrial collaborations to expand the synthetic utility of donor/acceptor carbenes [1-3].  This will include the use of bowl-shaped catalysts to control site selective C-H functionalization, computational studies to understand the conformational flexibility of the bowl-shaped catalysts, and pharmaceutical applications towards drug targets and scale-up synthesis.

Biography: Huw M. L. Davies is the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Organic Chemistry at Emory University. His research focuses on the development of new enantioselective synthetic methods.  His program covers design of chiral catalysts, metal carbene chemistry, development of new synthetic methodology, total synthesis of biologically active natural products, and development of chiral therapeutic agents. A major current theme of his program is catalytic asymmetric C–H functionalization by means of rhodium-carbene induced C–H insertion. He is actively involved in developing communities for collaborative and synergistic research.  He was the Director of the NSF Phase II Center for Chemical Innovation for Selective C-H Functionalization between 2009-2022 and is now the Director of the Catalysis Innovation Consortium, consisting of 41 professors from 28 universities. His awards including the American Chemical Society Cope Scholar Award (2005), the Encyclopedia of Reagents for Organic Synthesis Reagent of the Year Award (2013), Paul Rylander Award (from the Organic Reactions and Catalysis in Synthesis Society) (2018), and the ACS HC Brown Award for Creative Research in Synthetic Methods (2019). He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the American Chemical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.