OCS - Novartis Chemical Sciences Lectures

Speaker's Bio:
Dr. Alper received his Ph.D. in 1998 from the laboratory of Chi-Huey Wong at TSRI where he studied how chemical modifications of aminoglycoside antibiotics affect their antibiotic properties and binding to rRNA. After a postdoc with Erick Carreira at Caltech and ETH in Zürich where he uncovered new synthetic methods, Dr Alper joined Novartis in 1999. At Novartis, Dr. Alper has helped advance a number of projects including contributing key design features to a GPR119 agonist that went to the clinic as well as MHV370 (TLR7/8 antagonist currently in phase II). In 2011, Dr. Alper initiated a technology project with the NIBR San Diego engineering team aimed at developing a robust flow photochemistry instrument. The products made using this instrumentation at the San Diego, Basel and Cambridge sites have been used to advance a number of Novartis activities including archive enhancement, novel chemical matter for medicinal chemistry projects and peptide sciences, among others.

Speaker's Bio:
Eric Jacobsen joined Harvard University as full professor in 1993, was named the Sheldon Emory Professor of Organic Chemistry in 2001, and served as Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology from 2010 through 2015. He directs a research group of 20-25 graduate students and postdocs dedicated to discovering useful catalytic reactions, and to applying state-of-the art mechanistic and computational techniques to the analysis of those reactions. Several of the catalysts developed in his labs have found widespread application in industry and academia. These include metal-salen complexes for asymmetric epoxidation, conjugate additions, and hydrolytic kinetic resolution of epoxides; chromium-Schiff base complexes for a wide range of enantioselective pericyclic reactions; and organic hydrogen bond-donor catalysts for activation of neutral and cationic electrophiles. Jacobsen's mechanistic analyses of these systems have helped uncover general principles for catalyst design, including electronic tuning of selectivity, cooperative homo- and hetero-bimetallic catalysis, hydrogen-bond donor asymmetric catalysis, and anion binding catalysis. Before joining Harvard, Jacobsen served on the faculty of the University of Illinois from 1988 to 1993. He earned his B.S. degree at NYU, his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, and carried out postdoctoral studies at MIT.