Profile

Research Interests:

My research interest is mainly focused on the development new environmentally friendly and economically sustainable methodology for the transformation of relatively cheap starting material into valuable building blocks with highest molecular complexity, which can be transformed further to the desired target. To accomplish this goal, my research group will be active on three major areas:

a)Radical Chemistry & Metalloradical Catalysis: Since the historical report on “Triphenylmethyl: An Instance of Trivalent Carbon” by Gomberg, the field of radical chemistry has advanced significantly. Due to the mild reaction conditions, high functional group tolerance and high chemoselectivity radical reactions are becoming viable alternative to it’s ionic counterpart. However, taming organic radicals in required extent is still a challenging task. Part of my research group will be working on the development of new metalloradical promoted catalytic stereoselective radical reactions and understanding the reaction mechanism utilizing both modern synthetic techniques and computational tools.

b) Transition Metal Catalysis: Modern human civilization is constantly facing two major challenges, namely a) global warming b) upcoming shortage of fossil fuels. The amount of green-house gases has steadily been increased since pre-industrial times, and nowadays these components are the main responsible factors for climate change. To address these challenges, part of my research group will be active on designing new transition metal catalysed process for the valorization of CO2 and catalytic functionalization of biomass such as oleochemicals.

c) Natural Product Based Drug Design: Another area of concern in the modern human society is the emergence of more life-threatening disease. To provide environmental friendly and economically sustainable solution to this problem, it is absolutely essential to design new molecules either by natural product based or computer based drug design. Furthermore, according to the FDA guidelines every newly synthesized drug should be enantiopure. Nonetheless, rapid and streamline synthesis of complex organic molecules with very high enantiomeric excess is still a long-standing problem in organic synthesis. My research program will be dedicated to the development of new biomimetic approach for the synthesis of biologically active natural products and their biological activity will be studied in collaboration with the leading expert in this field.