Robert Comito Email & Phone Number

Catalytic selectivity underlies key challenges in the synthesis of complex molecules and the manufacture of commodity chemicals alike. I am interested in the development of highly selective catalysts guided by structural and mechanistic insight. During my doctoral studies, I focused on asymmetric catalysis in the context of natural product and fine chemical synthesis. In the course of these studies, I developed a stereoselective radical reaction that accomplishes the mild, asymmetric alpha-alkylation of carbonyls using chiral amine catalysis. Similarly, I also developed chiral copper catalysts for an asymmetric arylation/cyclization cascade, used for the the collective total syntheses of polypyrroloindoline natural products. For my postdoctoral work, I studied organometallic catalysis at the nodes of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) in the laboratory of Professor Mircea Dinca. Through cation exchange, we showed that catalytically active sites could be incorporate with considerable structural fidelity, providing a predictable strategy for incorporating discrete active sites into a porous high surface area solid. I have applied this approach to develop highly selective single-site heterogeneous catalysts for the polymerization and oligomerization of light alkenes.My independent career interests center on main group catalysis. Main group elements offer a number of potential advantages over traditional transition metal catalysts, including improved coordinative lability and the avoidance of beta-hydride elimination. This complementarity offers many opportunities for overcoming unsolved problems in transition metal catalysis. However, familiar elementary steps such as oxidative addition and CH insertion are rare among main group elements. My interests include the development of new platforms for main group catalysis and new catalytic transformations that take advantage of the special reactivity of main group elements.