ChemComm Emerging Investigators Desktop Seminar

Judy is a computational chemist and currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Houston. She received her Ph.D. in 2011 from the University of Georgia from Paul von Ragué Schleyer. Her current research interests span many areas of physical organic chemistry, including topics such as ground and excited-state aromaticity and antiaromaticity, photochemistry, supramolecular chemistry, and enzyme catalysis. As a theorist, she finds experimental verification of computational predictions even more gratifying.

Our group’s investigations in diazaphospholene pre-catalyst synthesis and the development of imine, conjugate and pyridine reductions will be presented. The evolution of our approaches to asymmetric imine reduction, finalizing with the development of air and water stable diazaphospholene pre-catalysts will be discussed.
 
Short Bio: Alex Speed was born and raised in Liverpool, Nova Scotia. While Canadian, his family is from North West England, and he enjoyed his times in the UK as a child. Alex has been interested in the natural world for as long as he can remember, possibly prompted by having a huge backyard and woods to explore. He attended Dalhousie University for his undergraduate degree in Chemistry, graduating in 2006, where he gained early research experience in both mechanistic and synthetic organic chemistry working in the groups of Professor James Pincock, and Professor Jean Burnell. After graduating with a PhD at Harvard in 2012, he was a post-doctoral associate at Boston College, working with Professor Amir Hoveyda on application of olefin metathesis in polyene synthesis. Alex returned to Dalhousie as an Assistant Professor in 2015, and continued his interest in methodology development through exploring catalysts based on main-group element compounds. The Speed lab has provided a number of seminal examples in diazaphospholene catalysis, mainly focusing on amine chemistry. Use of diazaphospholenes in catalysis is a rapidly developing field, with much international interest. The Speed group also maintains interests in the organic chemistry of boron and sulfur. Alex was promoted to an Associate Professor with tenure in 2020. When not in the lab, Alex enjoys growing plants, and exploring the great outdoors.