Dr Dr Thomas Hansen

The growing awareness of the environmental impact of chemical processes has generated a pressing need for more efficient methods of chemical production. Technologies that reduce or, preferably, eliminate the generation of waste and avoid the use of toxic and hazardous reagents are in great demand. This requires a paradigm shift from the traditional methodologies, which are mainly efficiency-driven processes focusing primarily on chemical yield and using stoichiometric amounts of (in)organic reagents, to atom efficiency-driven organic chemistry using effective catalytic alternatives. This is especially important for the generation of enantiomerically pure compounds, which have many applications in current day society. For example, many biologically active compounds (e.g., drugs) are chiral, requiring the selective synthesis of enantiomerically pure structures to avoid possible side effects caused by the other enantiomer. These compounds are synthesized on an industrial scale, which demands the use of atom efficiency-driven methodologies.