Sarah Pound has elegantly described our efforts to develop efficient, stereospecific cross-couplings of benzylic ammonium salts and benzylic and allylic carboxylates (link). She has also included the inspirations for our work in this area, as well as the important contributions from other groups. Great job, Sarah!

Kristen Baker advanced to PhD candidacy today. Great job at your first thesis committee meeting, and congratulations on “tenure,” Kristen!

Our collaborative paper with Pfizer, Inc., on the nickel-catalyzed arylation of benzylic pyridinium salts is highlighted in SYNFACTS (link). Congratulations, team!

Weiye Guan and Jennie Liao have developed conditions to transform amino groups into vinyl groups via benzyl pyridinium intermediates (link). This work is part of a Synthesis Special Topic: Modern Coupling Approaches and their Strategic Applications in Synthesis. Great work, Weiye and Jennie!

In collaboration with Drs. Michelle Garnsey, Joe Tucker, and Brian Boscoe from Pfizer, Jennie Liao, Weiye Guan, and John Tomlin have developed a method to transform widely available benzylic amines into di(hetero)arylmethanes (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.orglett.8b01062). Their strategy uses easily prepared benzyl pyridinium salts, and is broadly tolerant of a wide variety of electron-rich and electron-poor heteroaryl groups. Congratulations to the team!

 A belated welcome to our new first-year graduate students! Olivia Bercher, Yun Hong, Samantha Santana, and Mike Talley joined the group in December 2017.

Our paper, “Harnessing Alkyl Amines as Electrophiles for Nickel-Catalyzed Cross Couplings via C–N Bond Activation” is one of the Top 20  most downloaded JACS articles for the previous 12 months! Check it out: https://pubs.acs.org/action/showMostReadArticles?topArticlesType=recent&journalCode=jacsat

Congratulations to Weiye Guan, Megan Hoerrner, and Jianyu Xu on your Advancement to PhD Candidacy!

Congratulations, Dr. Corey Basch! Dr. Basch defended his thesis, “Nickel-Catalyzed Cross-Couplings via Activation of Alkyl Carbon–Nitrogen Bonds” with spectacular success! Corey established alkyl pyridinium salts as effective electrophiles for cross-couplings. We will miss you, and wish you the best in your postdoc with Prof. Tom Rovis!

Dr. Sarah Pound, Megan Hoerrner, and Mary represented the Watson group at SERMACS in Charlotte, North Carolina. Sarah and Megan rocked their talk and poster, and had a lot of fun meeting the Mole!

Our article on nickel-catalyzed cross-couplings via C–N bond activation is featured in the JACS Young Investigators Virtual Issue! Congratulations to the team, Corey Basch, Jennie Liao, Jianyu Xu, and Jake Piane! Read more on UDaily.

Congratulations to Earl Bampo, Winnie Cheung, Jingchen Yang, and Alana Duke (not pictured) on a great summer of research! Earl, Winnie, and Jingchen did a great job of presenting their work at the 8th Annual Undergraduate Research and Service Celebratory Symposium!

Congratulations to Kelsey Cobb, Javon Rabb-Lynch, Megan Hoerrner, Alex Manders, and Qi Zhou on their recent development of a stereospecific Suzuki–Miyaura cross-coupling of allylic pivalates to set all-carbon quaternary stereocenters (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.orglett.7b02063)! This reaction is enabled by a simple nickel/BISBI catalyst system, and enables efficient formation of allylic products with internal alkenes.

  Congratulations to Dr. Kelsey Cobb (PhD 2017), Tianyu Tan (MS 2017), Jake Piane (BS 2017), and Alex Manders (BS 2017)! We wish you the best in all your endeavors!

Corey, Jennie, Jianyu, and Jake’s cross coupling of alkyl amines is featured on Design for Science. Read it here: http://d4sci.com/activating-carbon-nitrogen-bonds-alkyl-amines-as-alkylating-agents/

Derek Lowe highlights our recent work in his blog, “In the Pipeline.” Read it here: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2017/04/07/couple-your-primary-amines.

Congratulations to Corey Basch, Jennie Liao, Jianyu Xu, and Jake Piane for their recent discovery of a new nickel-catalyzed cross coupling of alkyl pyridinium salts (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.7b02389)! When coupled with efficient formation of pyridinium salts from primary amines, this reaction enables the use of alkyl amines to alkyl arenes. It is the first cross coupling of an alkyl amine derivative with unactivated alkyl groups.

Congratulations to Dr. Kelsey Cobb on the successful defense of your thesis! Kelsey’s research focused on new nickel-catalyzed cross couplings of amine and alcohol derivatives to prepare highly enantioenriched products. We wish you all the best in your next position at Solenis!

Welcome to our new website! Stay tuned for frequent updates on our research and group.

Congratulations to Dr. Jixin Liu on the successful defense of your thesis! In our group, Jixin pioneered the development of diastereoselective and enantioselective alkynylations of oxocarbenium and iminium ion intermediates. We wish you all the best in your next position at Adesis!