Organocatalysis

Though organocatalysis has been developed two decades ago, but recently in the last decade, the exceptional rise of organocatalysis, especially asymmetric organocatalysis has been instrumental in solving many problems associated with synthetic organic chemistry. Organocatalysis has provided an alternative to conventional catalyses in a non-toxic, greener way. But the downside of this field has been substrate-specific [Chem. Eur. J. 2014, 20, 5983-5993]. Our group is currently studying the well-known organocatalysis transformations for unsuccessful moieties like sterically hindered substrates, unreactive moieties etc.

Carbohydrate Chemistry

The abundant chiral pool in nature provides a cheap and stable source for chirality in natural products. The de-symmetrization of the carbohydrates into specific templates also includes a way for diastereoselective organic transformations [Tetrahedron: Asymmetry 2006, 17(18), 2609-2616]. Our group intends to develop off-template diastereoselective organic transformations and tweak the chiral induction with additives via chelation, steric hindrance etc.

Natural Product Synthesis

The ultimate bridge from method development to pharmaceutical application still remains the passion for all organic chemists [Tetrahedron: Asymmetry, 2008, 19(18), 2123-2129, Org. Lett. 2012, 14 (4), 1086-1089]. We identify suitable natural products, new and known, and try to find a commercially viable and novel synthetic route to synthesize them.

Mechanistic Investigation

The importance of the mechanistic study of a chemical transformation is enormous, not only for academic purposes but also for further development of the methodology in expanding the substrate scope and designing new catalysts. This is evident from recent studies (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012, 51, 13144, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2016, 55, 669-673). We pursue reaction kinetics of the developed methodologies to decode the reaction mechanism, which should help us to improve the methodology and give the insight to develop diversified reactions.