Inorganic Chemistry Seminar: Dr. Phillip Milner, Cornell University

About the Seminar

Simplifying Synthesis at the Interface of Organic and Materials Chemistry

Porous framework materials, including metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), are highly tunable materials with myriad potential applications ranging from chemical separations to gas storage to catalysis. This is due to the unusual local environment offered by their pores. Herein we will discuss how this tunability can be used to unlock new reactive species relevant to organic synthesis and catalysis, focusing on fluorination chemistry, which is critical to the pharmaceutical, polymer, and agrochemical industries. We will also draw inspiration from organic chemistry for the design of new chemical separations and electrocatalytically active materials.

About the Speaker 

Phill was born a stone’s throw from Ithaca in Towanda, PA and grew up near Rochester, NY. Phill attended Hamilton College near Utica, NY, where his love of synthetic organic chemistry was born while working on radical cyclizations with Prof. Ian Rosenstein.

Phill graduated from Hamilton College in 2010 with B.A.s in Chemistry and Mathematics, and went on to pursue his Ph.D. in Chemistry with Prof. Stephen Buchwald at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In the Buchwald group, Phill carried out extensive mechanistic studies of the Pd-catalyzed fluorination of aryl (pseudo)halides, a reaction of importance due to the prevalence of aryl fluorides in pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals. Phill also developed the nearly instantaneous 11C-cyanation of aryl halides for the synthesis of PET radiotracers.

Phill joined the group of Prof. Jeffrey Long at the University of California, Berkeley upon graduating from MIT in 2015. As a post-doctoral Fellow in the Long group, Phill designed amine-functionalized metal–organic frameworks for the removal of CO2 from the flue gas emissions of power plants.

In 2018, Phill joined the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell University, where his research is focused broadly at the intersection of organic, inorganic, and materials chemistry. Phill is a member of the Cornell Center for Materials Research (CCMR) and the Cornell Energy Systems Institute (CESI), a Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability Faculty Fellow, and a field member in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

Phill’s independent awards and honors include: Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2023), NSF CAREER Award (2021), Robert A. and Donna B. Paul Award for Excellence in Advising (2021), Scialog Fellowship (2020), Department of Energy Early Career Award (2020), and NIH Maximizing Investigator’s Research Award (2020).

Host: Hema Karunadasa