Jeffrey Lipshultz
Stony Brook University, NY·Chemistry·Early-career
Light can power chemical reactions that are hard to run any other way. To use it, chemists need catalysts, substances that speed up reactions without being used up, that absorb light and steer the reactive pieces it creates.
- Fields
Chemistry
Biochemistry
- Topics
photocatalysis
photochemistry
titanium catalysis
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jun 2031
What they work on
- Develop bench-stable bipyridinyl titanium chloride complexes that, when excited by light through ligand-to-metal charge transfer, generate chlorine radicals that functionalize C–H bonds through hydrogen atom transfer.
- Use light-driven titanium catalysts to generate alkoxyl radicals from alcohols, cleaving and functionalizing C–C bonds with selectivity set by the catalyst rather than by the substrate.
- Build a cascade in which photochemically driven titanium radical redox activates normally inert C–O and then C–C bonds in sequence.
- Create a synthetic photodecarboxylase in which visible-light excitation of a PLP-like amino acid Schiff base triggers radical loss of carbon dioxide, yielding complex primary amines, including asymmetric versions using chiral PLP-mimicking catalysts.
- Aminate carbon-centered radicals using amino acid esters as an ammonia equivalent, inspired by radical aminomutase enzymes, including a hook-and-slide strategy that converts α-amino acids into β-, γ-, δ- and ε-amino acids.
More about the research
Many of today's light-driven catalysts rely on rare precious metals. Others have limited control over which bonds react. The lab's two projects pursue the same goal: designing catalysts that harness light and highly reactive radicals (molecules with an unpaired electron) to build valuable organic molecules from cheap, abundant starting materials. One project uses titanium, one of Earth's most common metals. The other borrows ideas from enzymes that depend on vitamin B6.
Why it matters
Complex amines are key building blocks of many drugs, and making them is often difficult. These projects could give pharmaceutical chemists faster routes to complex primary amines from simple, bio-derived amino acids. They could also offer light-driven catalysts built on cheap, abundant titanium instead of rare precious metals, making the synthesis of valuable molecules more sustainable.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Vladimir Gevorgyan
University of Texas at Dallas, TX·Chemistry
Develop a visible light–induced hybrid method that combines a transition-metal catalyst with radical steps to convert unactivated C(sp3)–H bonds, the single carbon–hydrogen bonds common in drugs, without acids or added oxidants.
Sebastien Laulhe
Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis, IN·Chemistry
Design aryl radicals with tuned steric bulk and electronic properties, generated from light-activated electron-donor-acceptor (EDA) complexes, to remove hydrogen atoms selectively from specific C(sp3)-H bonds.
Michel Gagne
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Chemistry
Develop site-selective and functional group-directed C-H functionalization reactions, which convert specific carbon-hydrogen bonds into new groups, using light-activated organic photoredox catalysts.
The school
Stony Brook University: 32 labs on PI Pages, $319M a year on research, 289 research doctorates a year.
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