Our research lies at the interface of Physical, Inorganic and Organic Chemistry.
Modern chemical synthesis employs a variety of reagents to interconvert chemicalfunctionalities andto impart molecular complexity. Such reagents often involve high-energy oxidizing and reductive species that require special handling and precautions duringuse in the laboratory.
Our overarchinggoal is to develop a systematic understanding of the electrochemical and photochemicalgeneration of in situoxidizing and reducing entities and overall circumventing the need for such energetic reagents. In this fashion, we address knowledge gaps related to the development of scalable, environmentally benign redox processes and catalysts, while we tackle problems in a variety of research fields such aswater quality and purification, sustainable chemical synthesis as well as energy production and storage.
We use a variety of analytical tools for reaction monitoring such as calorimetry, NMR, GC-FT-IR, Online Mass Spectrometry, and UV-Visto observethese transformations in real-time as they unfold, thus allowing us to get a high-levelmolecular picture ofreaction progressduring catalytic turnover. We use theseanalyses to inform reactionoptimization and identify intermediates along these complex chemical pathways.