Research Interests

My interests lie within the broad field of inorganic and organometallic chemistry. I have several ongoing projects that a number of different students have contributed to. Several of them are focused on the area of Green Chemistry which has the goal of developing chemical processes that can aid in reducing the amount of waste produced in industrial chemical reactions.

1. Development of Catalysts for the Oxidation of Organic Compounds Using Molecular Oxygen.

2. Investigation of Solvatochromic Inorganic Complexes.

Many inorganic complexes exhibit dramatically different colors in solution depending on the solvent. These compounds are both interesting and potentially useful because they can form the basis for devices that will act as sensors for a variety of environmentally or industrially relevant compounds. The mechanism for this solvatchromic behavior is not fully understood and my interest lies in developing useful model systems that can be used to probe the factors involved in the solvatochromism.

3. Binding and reactivity of inorganic complexes to DNA.