About the Seminar

Work in the Kisunzu Lab investigates the properties and reactivity of strained molecules – particularly focusing on benzynes and other arynes. Benzyne intermediates have been shown to undergo a variety of types of reactions including additions, pericyclic reactions, and bond insertions. Our lab is interested in contributing to the field of aryne chemistry through the development of complementary methods to access and apply these strained intermediates. Highlights from our work on new aryne reactions, photochemical aryne generation, and computational analysis will be discussed.

About the Speaker 

Jessica Kisunzu completed her undergraduate degree at Southern Adventist University and her Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, where she worked on the synthesis of diterpenoid alkaloid natural products. She then carried out postdoctoral research at the ETH Zürich, where she used computational and experimental methods to study the structure and activity of tripeptide catalysts. In 2017, she started as an Assistant Professor at Colorado College in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, where she teaches the organic chemistry sequence and conducts research with undergraduate students on the synthesis and application of benzyne intermediates.