About the Seminar

Our group is interested in exploring the use of unique structures in catalysis. A particular focus has been the design of catalyst platforms using aromatic ions such as cyclopropenium cation and cyclopentadienyl anion. With this program, we are seeking to develop broadly applicable paradigms for substrate activation that capitalize on the unique reactivity of these ionic aromatic motifs. This lecture will focus on our development of catalyst based on pentacarboxycyclopentadienes (PCCPs) and the advent of electrophotocatalysis using trisaminocyclopropenium (TAC) ion catalysts.

About the Speaker

Tristan was born in Madison, WI, in 1976 and grew up in the small town of Black Earth. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Platteville in 1998 with a B.S. in chemistry. The same year he began graduate studies at UC-Berkeley as one of Dave MacMillan’s first students. In 2000, Tristan moved with the MacMillan group to Caltech where he earned his Ph.D. for the development and application of novel Claisen rearrangements. In 2004, he began postdoctoral studies with Sam Danishefsky at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. At Sloan-Kettering he completed a total synthesis of UCS1025A, a putative telomerase inhibitor. In 2006, Tristan accepted a faculty position in the Department of Chemistry at Columbia University. In 2011 he was promoted to Associate Professor and in 2016 to Full Professor. In January 2018, he moved to the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell University.