Non-covalent interactions in catalysis
Over 80% of industrial and consumer chemicals are made using catalytic processes, and the net worth of these materials is >$900bn p.a. in the US alone. Tools to design and tune molecular catalysts for specific functions are therefore highly desirable. In our group, we will develop predictive, physically-motivated tools to connect the fundamentals of molecular interactions to catalytic activity.
Molecular editing
Almost 80% of drugs on the commercial market are small molecules, and the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies reported a total revenue of >$800bn in 2022. Molecular editing – the site-specific modification of complex molecules – promises to revolutionize the synthesis of small molecule drugs, updating the rulebook for molecular design with an atomic-scale toolbox to add, delete, swap and mutate individual sites at will. Our group will develop reactivity models to understand and predict molecular editing reaction processes at the most fundamental level.
Polymer upcycling
The mass of new plastics made per year is predicted to outstrip the total mass of all humans on Earth in the next decade, yet less than 20% of plastic waste is recycled worldwide. A current paradigm in plastics development is to use polymer mixtures and additives to achieve optimal material properties, which renders these materials extremely difficult to recycle. In our group, we will develop new ways to think about light-driven polymer reactivity, with the ultimate goal of developing new types of recyclable high-performance materials.
Physical organic chemistry
The understanding of chemical reactivity fundamentally underpins advances in chemistry, biochemistry, materials science, and pharmaceutical research. In our group, we aim to understand the intricate connections between physical interactions and chemical reactivity, using these ideas to make chemistry more intuitive. Physical organic models developed in our group must satisfy three criteria: they must be simple, interpretable, and useful.