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Twists & Turns On the Path of Reaction Discovery

Professor Nelson will discuss his recent efforts to utilize phenyl and vinyl carbocations in C–H functionalization reactions. He will describe how these high-energy dicoordinated carbocations can be generated under mild conditions and utilized in the selective C–C bond forming reactions of simple hydrocarbons. Moreover, he will discuss our efforts to understand the mechanism of these reactions through computational chemistry, kinetics, electron microscopy, and isotopic labeling studies. In the second half of the talk, he will discuss efforts to bring electron microscopy to organic chemistry through the use of MicroED and other CryoEM modalities in natural product elucidation.

Hosea Nelson earned a B.S. in Chemistry from Univ. of California at Berkeley in 2005 and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 2013. After postdoctoral training at University of California at Berkeley, Prof. Nelson joined the UCLA faculty in 2015. In 2021 he joined Caltech's Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. His research program focuses on the development of enabling technologies for chemical synthesis. His group focuses on this goal through 2 avenues: 1) The structural chemistry subgroup develops new electron microscopy techniques that enable the characterization of complex molecules, often unattainable using traditional methods. 2) The synthetic subgroup focuses on new chemical reactions that enable the efficient and rapid synthesis of bioactive compounds.

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