Eric Jacobsen

Eric Jacobsen joined Harvard University (USA) 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. ProfessorJacobsen'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, Eric Jacobsen served on the faculty of the University of Illinois from 1988 to 1993.  He earned his B.S. degree at New York University, his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, and carried out postdoctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The visit of Professor Jacobsen is funded jointly by USIAS and the Institute of Supramolecular Science and Engineering (ISIS), where he will give two lectures as part of his visit: Catalysis: A Frontier at the Center of Chemistry and Minding Mechanistic Misfits!.