Xiaodong Shi
University of Maryland, MD·Chemistry
Many medicines, materials and biological probes are built using metal catalysts that join carbon atoms in specific ways. Some important reactions remain hard to run because existing catalysts break down, or because they cannot control which mirror-image form of a molecule is made.
- Fields
Chemistry
- Topics
catalysis
olefin metathesis
ruthenium carbene catalysts
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- 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.
- Carry out mechanistic studies of how the triazole ligand stabilizes and changes the reactivity of ruthenium-carbene catalysts, and convert metathesis products into targets for medicinal and materials chemistry.
- Develop new oxidation conditions for gold(I)-to-gold(III) redox catalysis, and use a gold/iron dual catalyst to reach vinyl-gold intermediates for carbon–carbon and carbon–heteroatom bonds and macrocycle synthesis.
- Achieve asymmetric gold redox catalysis by applying chiral N,P ligands to enantioselective alkene difunctionalization and by designing triazole-based chiral ligands for gold(III) catalysis.
More about the research
The lab develops new metal catalysts, based on ruthenium and on gold, to make difficult bond-forming reactions practical. A recurring tool in both projects is the triazole, a small ring of carbon and nitrogen atoms used as a ligand, the part that binds to and tunes the metal.
Why it matters
Chemists in pharmaceutical, biotech and materials industries could gain new routes to molecules that are scarce, structurally complex or expensive to make. These methods could help build chemical libraries for finding drug leads and could improve production processes for active pharmaceutical ingredients. They could also supply new building blocks for biological probes and potential therapeutics.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ramesh Giri
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Chemistry
Develop transition-metal-catalyzed difunctionalization of alkenes bearing simple functional groups, using a dual ligand system of electron-deficient alkenes and organic nitriles to stabilize intermediates and promote C(sp3)–C(sp3) bond formation.
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.
Gregory Fu
California Institute of Technology, CA·Chemistry
Develop nickel- and copper-catalyzed substitution reactions that couple families of alkyl electrophiles and nucleophiles not previously shown to react together, including highly hindered substrates.
The school
University of Maryland: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 602 research doctorates a year.
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