James Bour
Wayne State University, MI·Chemistry·Early-career
Many useful chemicals are hard to handle because they are solids that do not dissolve, or because their internal structure contains hidden flaws. This lab tackles both problems by designing materials and large molecules (macromolecules) whose physical form makes chemistry easier to automate and better to control.
- Fields
Chemistry
Materials Science
- Topics
organic synthesis
high-throughput experimentation
automated liquid handling
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Dec 2029
What they work on
- Develop colloidal suspensions of normally insoluble inorganic reagents so automated liquid handlers can dispense them, and benchmark them in cross-coupling reactions including cross-electrophile couplings.
- Create material and macromolecular versions of cell-toxic reagents, such as organic superbases and metal scavengers, so high-throughput reaction products can go directly into biological assays.
- Synthesize site-isolated catalysts that prevent catalyst molecules from decomposing each other, and test them in electrophilic carbon-hydrogen functionalization and mild fluoro-dediazotization reactions.
- Measure native defects in model microporous organic polymers using network disassembly, a chemical method that breaks the rigid polymer apart for analysis.
- Copolymerize standard monomers with defect-simulating or pro-defective monomers to quantify how defects change surface area, pore volume and pore size distribution.
More about the research
One project adapts such materials to robotic, high-throughput chemistry used in drug discovery; the other asks how structural defects control tiny pores in organic polymers.
Why it matters
Making insoluble or toxic reagents compatible with automated chemistry could widen the range of molecules screened for new medicines, speed up drug discovery and lower drug costs. Design rules linking defects to porosity could help chemists build better porous polymers for water purification, gas storage and purification, energy harvesting, sensing and catalysis.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Sarah Reisman
California Institute of Technology, CA·Chemistry
Develop a photoredox-catalyzed radical-polar crossover annulation (RPCA), a light-driven ring-forming reaction, to build the bridged bicyclo[3.2.1]octane core of the polyketide natural product enterocin.
Christopher Sandford
University of Texas at San Antonio, TX·Chemistry
Develop an organometallic catalyst whose site selectivity switches when irradiated with different wavelengths of visible or ultraviolet light, so one catalyst can react at different sites on a molecule.
Patrick Walsh
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Chemistry
Develop enantioselective nickel-catalyzed cross-electrophile coupling, which joins sulfur electrophiles with aryl or alkyl halides, to make diaryl and alkyl aryl sulfoxides enriched in one mirror-image form.
The school
Wayne State University: 21 labs on PI Pages, $292M a year on research, 194 research doctorates a year.
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