Increasing CO₂ emissions into the atmosphere have led to global warming and other climate issues. One way to combat this is through the photocatalytic CO₂ reduction reaction. In this reaction, CO₂ and water are used as reactants to produce value-added products such as CO, CH₄, CH₃OH, and C₂H₅OH. TiO₂ is one of the most common photocatalysts due to its relatively high efficiency, low cost, and availability.

Photoelimination of ligands in transition metal complexes can create reactive species that can act as catalysts and reagents for several useful reactions. To better understand the dynamics of this process, the photoelimination of the ligands in the tricarbonylnitrosylcobalt complex was studied as a model for the elimination of nitrosyl ligands from mixed-ligand species.

The Nacsa Group uses electron transfer techniques to address challenges in organic synthesis. Our lab works in two main areas. The first uses electrochemistry to develop new approaches for dehydration reactions, such as the synthesis of amides and esters from carboxylic acids, with an emphasis on catalysis. Dehydrative transformations are workhorse operations in pharmaceutical R&D, but owing to the wasteful reagents overwhelmingly used to accomplish them, industry has long called for methods that avoid these reagents.

Fluorine has quickly become an atom of great importance in pharmaceutical development. Fluorine, being the element with the highest electronegativity,  can impart substantial changes to a molecule’s chemical and physical properties. Incorporation of fluorine into a given framework can be divided into both nucleophilic and electrophilic fluorinating reagents. Particularly, nucleophilic fluorination has the distinct advantage over electrophilic fluorination when accessing radioactive [¹⁸F] labeled substances.

Nucleophilic dearomatization receives attention for its ability to install stereogenicity within a molecule using few steps. Whilst using aromatic substrates as a starting material can be difficult due to the low reactivity, methods have been developed to utilized them as building blocks. Exploring into pharmaceuticals and natural products will show a common moiety in di/tetrahydro pyridine and piperidines. These moieties can be synthesized via nucleophilic dearomatization of pyridines.

Diels–Alder (DA) reactions featuring furan as diene have often been plagued with a variety of challenges due to the ease of reversibility.^[1] Factors that contribute to this trend stem from a large HOMO–LUMO gap between furan and the dienophile as well as the greater ring-strain of the newly furnished oxa-norbornene cycloadduct in contrast to cyclopentadiene, its carbo-congener. To address these shortcomings, highly activated furans and/or dienophiles have been developed to achieve the desired cycloaddition.

Daidzein, a bioactive isoflavonoid found in soybeans, roselle, and other legumes, has gained attention for its antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and estrogenic properties.¹ Its therapeutic potential in bone health, cardiovascular protection, and cancer prevention has positioned it as a key compound in nutraceuticals and functional foods.^1,2  Accurate extraction and analysis of daidzein are critical for quality control, pharmacokinetics studies, and broader applications in the growing market for plant-based bioactives.^2,3 &nbsp