Organic Chemistry Seminar: Dr. Elaine Raguram, Harvard University
Photo credits: Aditya Raguram
About the Seminar
"Development of Highly Active Transition-Metal Catalysts"
Transforming inexpensive, abundant, and readily accessible starting materials into high-value products like pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and materials is a fundamental challenge in synthetic chemistry. Transition-metal catalysts can address this challenge by accessing unique elementary steps, including oxidative addition–reductive elimination cycles and single-electron-transfer mechanisms. In this talk, I will describe my graduate and postdoctoral work utilizing transition-metal catalysts to solve outstanding challenges in synthetic chemistry. First, I will discuss the development of deactivation-resistant Pd catalysts to enable particularly challenging C–N cross-coupling reactions. I will then detail the development of super-oxidizing molecular Ag(II) photocatalysts that can generate fluoroalkyl radicals directly from redox-reticent fluoroalkyl carboxylates via photoinduced ligand-to-metal charge transfer.
About the Speaker
Elaine obtained an A.B. in Chemistry & Physics from Harvard College, where she conducted research in the laboratory of Prof. Eric Jacobsen. She then earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from MIT under the guidance of Prof. Stephen Buchwald, where she developed deactivation-resistant Pd catalysts for C–N cross-coupling reactions. As an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellow with Prof. Daniel Nocera at Harvard, she has developed super-oxidizing Ag(II) photocatalysts for fluoroalkylation reactions. Her research integrates organometallic catalysis and mechanistic analysis to enable the efficient synthesis of complex molecules.