Organic Chemistry Seminar: Professor Hosea Nelson, UCLA

Organic Chemistry Seminar: Professor Hosea Nelson, UCLA (Host: Noah Burns)

About the Seminar

"Twists and turns along the path of reactivity-driven methods development"

Carbocations are important reactive intermediates that are invoked in many chemical transformations. These species are usually of the tricoordinated variety. Conversely, dicoordinated carbocations are rarely relevant in practical chemical processes due to their high energy and energetically challenging formation. In this talk I will discuss our recent efforts to utilize phenyl and vinyl carbocations in C–H functionalization reactions. We will describe how these high-energy dicoordinated carbocations can be generated under mild conditions and utilized in selective C–C bond forming reactions. Moreover, we will discuss our efforts to understand the mechanism of these reactions through computational chemistry, kinetics, electron microscopy, and isotopic labeling studies.

About the Speaker

Prof. Nelson began his academic career at City College of San Francisco. He then earned a B.S. in Chemistry from University of California at Berkeley in 2005 and a  Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 2013. After postdoctoral training at University of California at Berkeley, Prof. Nelson joined the UCLA faculty in 2015. Broadly speaking, Prof. Nelson’s research program is focused on the development of enabling technologies for chemical synthesis. His group approaches this goal through several research areas including reaction discovery, electron crystallography, biocatalysis and total synthesis.