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Professors Hoveyda, Kelly, Kingsbury, Morken, Scott, Snapper, & Tan
Amir H. Hoveyda

Joseph T. and Patricia Vanderslice Millennium Professor of Chemistry

Contact Information:
amir.hoveyda@bc.edu
617-552-3618

Ph.D., Yale University, 1986

American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University 1986–87; 1988–90

Selected Honors & Awards:

National Institutes of Health MERIT Award, 2005

American Chemical Society Cope Scholar Award, 1998

National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, 1992


We discover, design and develop new catalysts for chemical synthesis that are easily prepared, are stable to air and moisture and can be recycled. We introduce efficient new chiral catalysts that can be used to synthesize important enantiomerically pure compounds for the preparation of biologically and medicinally active agents. Our focus is on transformations that are truly important (such as conjugate additions and olefin metathesis), but cannot be catalyzed efficiently by existing methods. We are interested in complex molecule total synthesis (testing our catalysts), study of reaction mechanism (how do our catalysts work?) and new approaches to catalyst discovery (combinatorial chemistry).

Representative Key Publications:

"Cascade Catalysis in Synthesis. An Enantioselective Route to Sch 38516 (and Fluvirucin B1) Macrolactam," A. F. Houri, Z. Xu, D. A. Cogan, A. H. Hoveyda J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1995, 117, 2943.

"Recyclable and Efficient Monomeric and Dendritic Ru-Based Metathesis Catalysts," S. B. Garber, J. S. Kingsbury, B. L. Gray, A. H. Hoveyda J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2000, 122, 8168.

“N-Heterocyclic Carbenes in Natural Product Synthesis.  Application of Ru-Catalyzed Asymmetric Ring-Opening Metatesis and Cu-Catalyzed Allylic Alkylation to Total Synthesis of Baconipyrone C,” D. G. Gillingham, A. H. Hoveyda, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 2007, 45, 3860.