Michael Krische
University of Texas at Austin, TX·Chemistry
Making medicines and farm chemicals often involves costly, hazardous reagents and produces large amounts of waste. These grants develop catalysts that build carbon–carbon bonds cleanly from cheap, abundant starting chemicals, ideally with no byproducts.
- Fields
Chemistry
- Topics
transition metal catalysis
asymmetric catalysis
enantioselective synthesis
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Jan 2030
What they work on
- Develop ruthenium catalysts with chiral phosphine ligands that convert C–H bonds of aromatic N-heterocycles into allylated products, via hydroruthenation of dienes, allenes, or alkynes and dearomative C=N addition.
- Develop catalytic reductive carbon–carbon couplings driven by hydrogen gas, 2-propanol, or sodium formate, including hydrogen auto-transfer reactions that turn lower alcohols and amines into higher ones.
- Apply hydrogen-mediated coupling methods to the total synthesis of polyketide natural products with anticancer or antibacterial properties.
- Extend base-tolerant π-allyliridium-C,O-benzoate catalysts to enantioselective allylic substitutions with high-pKa (weakly acidic) pronucleophiles and inexpensive carbonate bases.
- Use iodide-bound π-allylruthenium complexes for oxidant-free allylic C–H functionalization of alpha-olefins, and ruthenium and iron catalysts for byproduct-free hydrofunctionalization of butadiene.
More about the research
Many of these reactions work by adding or shuffling hydrogen atoms, much like hydrogenation, the most widely used reaction in drug manufacturing. Many also control a molecule's "handedness" (chirality). The methods aim to give practical routes to drug-like molecules and natural products.
Why it matters
These catalytic methods could make drug and agrochemical ingredients more cheaply and safely, with less chemical waste. They turn abundant feedstocks such as alpha-olefins, butadiene, and nitrogen heterocycles into valuable chiral products. Linking new reactions to natural product synthesis could also support medicinal chemistry on anticancer and antibacterial compounds.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Catalytic C-C Coupling via Hydrogen Transfer
NIH · Feb 2025 – Jan 2030
Enantioselective N-Heteroaryl C-H Functionalization via Dearomative Addition-Hydrogen Auto-Transfer
NSF · Aug 2026 – Jul 2029
Green Chemistry for Valorization of Commodity Chemicals via pi-Allylmetal Intermediates
NSF · Jul 2023 – Jun 2027
Closest labs
Paul Chirik
Princeton University, NJ·Chemistry
Discover robust iron and cobalt catalyst precursors in several oxidation states, using oxidatively-induced reductive elimination and arene displacement from metal sandwich compounds.
Xiaodong Shi
University of Maryland, MD·Chemistry
Optimize triazole-ruthenium carbene (TA-Ru) catalysts, whose triazole ligands improve heat stability, for olefin metathesis reactions that previous catalysts handled poorly, including high-temperature transformations.
Aaron Aponick
University of Georgia, GA·Chemistry
Identify Pd(II)-StackPhos catalysts, palladium paired with a chiral imidazole-based biaryl ligand, that give high mirror-image selectivity in alkene 1,2-difunctionalization for both syn- and anti-addition.
The school
University of Texas at Austin: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.1B a year on research, 871 research doctorates a year.
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