Professor Dr Donna G. Blackmond

Research priorities: asymmetric catalysis, kinetics, organic chemistry, reaction mechanisms, homochirality
Donna G. Blackmond’s research focuses on mechanistic studies of organic reactions, including asymmetric catalysis. She pioneered the methodology of “Reaction Progress Kinetic Analysis (RPKA)” for fundamental mechanistic studies of complex organic reactions. She studies prebiotic chemistry and the origin of biological homochirality.
Donna G. Blackmond’s focuses on blending the quantitative aspects of her chemical engineering background together with the synthesis of complex organic molecules by catalytic routes, particularly asymmetric catalysis with application in pharmaceutical processes. This work led to development of Reaction Progress Kinetic Analysis (RPKA), a methodology combining highly accurate in-situ data collection with a rigorous mathematical and graphical approach that permits “kinetic-assisted mechanistic analysis” of complex reaction networks.
Her research efforts involve experimental, computational, and theoretical investigations of complex organic reactions and reaction networks including asymmetric organocatalytic reactions, Pd-catalyzed C-C and C-N bond forming reactions, asymmetric hydrogenation, competitive reactions including kinetic resolutions, and investigations of nonlinear effects in stoichiometric, catalytic, and autocatalytic reactions.
Donna G. Blackmond’s theoretical work has derived relationships between catalyst enantiopurity and reaction rate that expand the power of this tool as a meaningful mechanistic probe. This work led into another area of fundamental research probing the origin of biological homochirality, a phenomenon that may itself be considered a remarkable nonlinear effect.
Her team has expanded the range of models from proposals based purely on chemical reactions, including symmetry breaking in asymmetric autocatalysis, to models based on physical phase behavior of chiral molecules as well as a combination of chemical and physical processes. They seek to rationalize the evolution of biological homochirality with experimental work and theoretical models.