Department of Chemistry Seminar Announcement

1. Department of Chemistry Seminar Announcement About the Speaker Professor Nam Wonwoo is a world leading bioinorganic chemist who has published widely in his field. He is currently Ewha Distinguished Professor and Director of Center for Biomimetic Systems at Ewha Womans University, Republic of Korea. He is concurrent professor at Nanjing University and honorary professor at University of Hong Kong. He has published papers in premium journals such as Science and JACS and was editorial advisory board member of Accounts of Chemical Research (2006 – 2008), Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry (2007 – 2010) and Journal of Biological Inorganic Chemistry (2003 – 2005, 2007 – 2009). He has received numerous awards including The 5th DuPont Science and Technology Award 2006 and Korean Chemical Society Award 2006. His research focuses on synthetic model compounds for the active sites of heme and non-heme iron proteins ands oxidation chemistry of high valent metal-oxo species. Visit of Professor Nam is expected to foster collaboration between NUS Chemistry and Ewha Womans University which is one of the top universities in South Korea and research collaborations between Professor Nam and NUS chemistry faculty members who are interested in biomimetic chemistry, inorganic synthesis, oxidation chemistry and metal-based catalysis. Furthermore, it will be a good opportunity for graduate and senior undergraduate student to learn frontier bioinorganic chemistry from Professor Nam. Abstract Dioxygen is essential in life processes, and enzymes activate dioxygen to carry out a variety of biological reactions. One primary goal in biomimetic research is to elucidate structures of reactive intermediates and mechanistic details of dioxygen activation and oxygenation reactions occurring at the active sites of enzymes, by utilizing synthetic metal-oxygen complexes. A growing class of metal-oxygen complexes, such as metal-superoxo, -peroxo, -hydroperoxo, and –oxo species, have been isolated, characterized spectroscopically, and investigated in various oxygenation reactions. During the past decade, we have been studying the chemical and physical properties of various reactive intermediates in oxygenation reactions, such as high-valent iron(IV)- and manganese(V)-oxo complexes of heme and non-heme ligands in oxo-transfer and C-H activation reactions, non-heme metal peroxo complexes in nucleophilic reactions, and non-heme metal-superoxo complexes in electrophilic reactions. The effects of supporting and axial ligands on structural and spectroscopic properties and reactivities of metal-oxygen adducts have been extensively investigated as well. I will present our recent results on the reactivities of various metal-oxygen intermediates in electrophilic and nucleophilic oxidation reactions. The synthesis and structural and spectroscopic characterization of mononuclear nonheme metal-oxygen intermediates will be discussed as well. All are Welcome