Our recently established research group at IITK has research interests broadly encompassing the areas of enantioselective catalysis, development of new reactions, and medicinal chemistry.
The unifying theme of our research is the development of new and efficient chemical transformations in order to create novel small molecule organics for potential applications in the fields of medicine, material science, and agrochemicals. One of our programs focuses on the development of novel fluorination reactions. Owing to the important applications of fluorinated compounds as drugs, diagnostic tools (PET imaging), and as agrochemicals, the synthesis of such molecules is of contemporary interest, and our lab is exploring the synthesis of novel fluorinated small molecules by developing fluorination strategies that employ fluoride anion as the source of fluorine. In addition to expanding the fluorinated chemical space, this strategy will lead to a more economical approach toward fluorinated compounds as opposed to the vast majority of current methods that employ electrophilic fluorination reagents.
A second area of research in our laboratory is photoredox catalysis wherein we aim to develop visible-light mediated reactions. Visible light represents an abundant, inexpensive, and clean source of energy and through its synergistic use with a suitable catalyst, it has been possible to activate certain types of organic molecules toward interesting, novel, and useful reactions. We are investigating a variety of olefin functionalization and cyclization reactions that will result in novel scaffolds that are valuable synthetic intermediates and also represent novel chemical spaces relevant to drug discovery and chemical biology.
