While iron-based methods offer tremendous potential for sustainable bond breaking and bond making reactions across the breadth of modern organic synthesis, they remain largely uncompetitive with platinum group metals for practical use. Central to this challenge has been the absence of detailed molecular-level understanding across these iron-based reactions, hindering rational catalyst development. This limitation is in stark contrast to palladium chemistry, where detailed studies of active catalyst structure and mechanism have provided the foundation for the continued design and development of catalysts with novel and/or improved catalytic performance. To overcome this historical challenge, we employ an innovative physical-inorganic approach to define the nature of the active iron catalysts, ligand and additive effects on product yields and reaction efficiencies, and the unproductive pathways that hamper optimal catalytic performance. This presentation will focus on our recent studies in organoiron intermediates, mechanism and methods development across reactions including cross-coupling and C-H activation.
Biography:
Originally from a dairy farming community in rural Pennsylvania, Michael received his BA in chemistry from Colgate University in 1999. Following studies at the University of Cambridge as a Churchill Scholar leading to an MPhil degree in chemistry, he moved to Stanford University where he received his PhD in chemistry in 2007 in the group of Professor Edward Solomon. After brief stops at Dow Chemical as a Senior Research Chemist and Los Alamos National Lab as a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Michael joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Rochester as an Assistant Professor in 2011 with subsequent promotion to Associate Professor in 2017, Professor in 2020 and the Marshall D. Gates, Jr. Professor of Chemistry in 2021. He moved to the University of Oxford as Professor of Chemistry in 2022 and Tutorial Fellow in Inorganic Chemistry at Magdalen College. His work has been recognized through several awards including a Sloan Research Fellowship (2015), National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2015), a DOE Early Career Award (2016) and an EPSRC Open Fellowship (2025).