Organic chemistry

Creating molecules with purpose

Organic chemistry focuses on carbon-containing compounds, including hydrocarbons and their derivatives. It studies molecular structure, reactions, and target oriented synthesis, forming the foundation for pharmaceuticals, polymers, and natural products. Organic chemists use strategies like retrosynthetic analysis to design and create new molecules with specific properties. They also explore reaction mechanisms and stereochemistry, ensuring precise control over molecular shape and function.

The field plays a vital role in drug discovery, and in agrochemicals or organic materials’ synthesis. Advanced organic chemistry continues to drive cutting edge innovations in medicine, organic materials, and sustainable green chemistry.

Meet our researchers

Dr. Eric Fillion’s research program centers on the design, synthesis, and study of novel hypercoordinated and cationic main group organometallic compounds. These organometallic compounds serve as reagents in Lewis acid-catalyzed transformations and as catalysts in the development of new synthetic methods. A better understanding of hypercoordinated and cationic main group organometallic compounds will lead to the discovery of novel reactivity that could be applied to organic catalysis and provide new tools to organic chemists.

Dr. Robert Lemieux's research focuses on designing and synthesizing advanced liquid crystal materials for electro-optical and photonic technologies. His work combines organic synthesis, physical organic chemistry, and materials science to understand how molecular structure influences the properties of liquid crystals. A major area of his research investigates the role of molecular chirality in smectic liquid crystal phases and how it can be used to develop faster-switching ferroelectric and electroclinic liquid crystal displays (LCDs). By creating and characterizing new liquid crystal materials, his lab helps advance the performance of next-generation display and photonic devices.

Dr. Graham Murphy has recently discovered a new approach to incorporating fluorine and chlorine into organic materials, using hypervalent iodine reagents as halogen transfer agents. This chemistry holds broad appeal to a wide community, and is continuously being expanded to include structural scaffolds of industrial, medicinal and societal importance.

Dr. Derek Schipper's research is focused on tackling synthetic challenges posed in the context of conjugated organic materials. These materials are poised to make significant technological breakthroughs that will enable the advancement of flexible, lightweight, low-cost electronic devices such as photovoltaics, light emitting diodes and field-effect transistors. The performance of any device depends on the bulk properties of the active material. Improvements of the material properties arise from modification of the material on the molecular level and, therefore, stem from advances in the design and synthesis of new molecular architectures.

Dr. Scott Taylor's research program is currently focused on four key areas: (1) the synthesis and study of cyclic lipodepsipeptide antibiotics; (2) the development of novel phosphorylation chemistry and its application to the synthesis of inhibitors of cytidine triphosphate synthase, an anti-cancer and antiviral target; (3) the development of inhibitors of steroid sulfatase, a breast cancer target; and (4) the modification of starch nanoparticles which are evaluated for their ability to extract oil from oil sands and as novel wound dressings.