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| Name |
Blackmond, Donna G. |
| Location
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Scripps Research |
| Primary Field
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Chemistry |
| Secondary Field
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Engineering Sciences |
 Election Citation
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Donna Blackmond studies complex organic reactions, particularly in asymmetric catalysis, and examines biological homochirality of amino acids and sugars to better understand origins of life.
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Research Interests
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Donna Blackmond's laboratory carries out mechanistic studies of complex organic reactions, particularly in asymmetric catalysis. She developed the methodology of Reaction Progress Kinetic Analysis (RPKA), which uses data-rich experimental tools along with computational and graphical manipulation to interrogate multistep catalytic reaction mechanisms. Together with collaborators, she has investigated a wide variety of reactions, including transition-metal catalyzed carbon-carbon and carbon-nitrogen coupling, asymmetric hydrogenation, and C-H functionalization, as well as asymmetric organocatalytic transformations. She has probed the phenomenon of nonlinear effects (NLE) in asymmetric synthesis, catalysis, and autocatalysis. She also investigates mechanistic aspects of electrochemical reactions in organic synthesis. She participates in two National Science Foundation Centers for Chemical Innovation (CCI). Another key area of her research seeks to understand the origin of biological homochirality of amino acids and sugars in the context of origin of life research. This work has uncovered both chemical and physical models for enantioenrichment that have been combined with advances in prebiotic chemistry to develop plausible rationalizations for the emergence of the building blocks of life. These studies have also led to valuable methodologies for the chiral synthesis of modern pharmaceuticals. She is a P.I. in the Simons Collaboration on the Origins of Life.
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