Joseph Merola

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA

Title: Double-Duty Complexes: Catalysis and Biological Activity in One Neat Package

---

Biography

Joseph S. Merola is a Professor of Chemistry at Virginia Tech and a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon University (B.S. Chemistry, 1974).  He received his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1978 from M.I.T under the direction of Professor Dietmar Seyferth.  In 1978, he joined the Corporate Research Laboratories of Exxon Research and Engineering Co in New Jersey.  In 1987, he joined Virginia Tech where he has been ever since, although he has held many different roles over his time there.  Professor Merola is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has published over 120 papers in the organometallic chemistry and catalysis field.

Abstract

“Piano-Stool” complexes of transition metals have been known since the beginning of “modern” organometallic chemistry, often dated to the serendipitous discovery of ferrocene in 1951.  Since then, the number of pi-complexes of metals including other sandwich and half-sandwich compounds (piano-stools) is difficult to quantify.  A “Google Scholar” search on the terms “piano-stool” or “half-sandwich” complexes returned over 150,000 hits and that is probably not a complete accounting.  With at least that number in the literature, is there anything new to add to the field?  It is the hope that this lecture will convince you that the answer is “yes!”

This talk will describe chemistry of rhodium and iridium piano-stool complexes for:

1. Hydrogenation/dehydrogenation chemistry
2. Anti-microbial activity including anti-TB and anti-MRSA compounds.
   1. A tantalizing look at new anti-viral activity

In both areas, how changing the piano-stool metal, pi-ligand, and other ligands ca tune both catalytic activity and biological activity will be discussed.