The design and study of new catalysts and catalytic processes with applications for pharmaceutical, natural product and industrial chemical synthesis.

Polymer Science, Sustainable Chemistry, and Homogeneous Catalysis: Intrinsically recyclable & bio-derived sustainable polymers; chemical synthesis of biodegradable microbial plastics; precision (living and stereoselective & chemoselective) polymer synthesis; Lewis pair polymerization methodology for compounded sequence control; metal-catalyzed coordination polymerization for chiral polymers; organocatalysis for biomass conversion to fuels, chemicals & materials.

Bioinorganic, Bioorganic, Physical Organic Chemistries, with focuses on characterization of menaquinone metabolism and ihibition of electron transport in tuberculosis bacteria, vanadium containing anti-diabetic and anti-malarial compounds, microemulsion drug-membrane interaction studies, copper (II) amyloid-beta and peptide complexation studies, and spectroscopic techniques including 1D and 2D NMR, EPR, fluorescence and IR.

Molecular recognition, self-assembly, development of novel biological recognition motifs, construction of synthetic receptors for small molecules of biological interest, design of catalytic peptides.

Synthetic chemistry, new reaction development, heterocyclic chemistry, organophosphorus chemistry, dearomatized intermediates, catalytic reactions

organic chemistry, catalysis, polymer science

Teaching Responsibilities: General Chemistry, Problem Solving in General Chemistry, Introductory Seminar in Chemistry, Honors Seminar: Water Science

The Paton group uses computational and data-driven approaches to make synthetic chemistry more predictable. We develop tools to predict molecular properties, design new functional molecules and optimize synthetic routes. Our approach combines quantum mechanical calculations, physical organic chemistry and machine learning.