Title: From Rhodium to Cobalt: Expanding Catalytic Double Hydroborations from Pyridines to Acyclic Enals, Enones, and Enimines

Speaker: Assoc. Prof. Sehoon Park (Guangdong TechnionIsrael Institute of Technology)

Time: November 6, 2026 (Friday), 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM

Venue: Large Conference Room, 4th Floor of the Shaw Engineering Building, Wushan Campus

Organizer: School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering

Biography

 Sehoon Park was born in Seoul, Korea. He received his Ph.D. (2008) from Tokyo Institute of Technology under the cosupervision of Prof. Kohtaro Osakada and Prof. Daisuke Takeuchi. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Maurice Brookhart at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2009–2012). From 2013 to 2019, he was at the Institute for Basic Science (Korea) with Prof. Sukbok Chang, where he was promoted to tenuretrack research fellow (2017) and also served as an adjunct professor at the Korea University of Science and Technology since 2016. In early 2019, he joined Guangdong Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (GTIIT) as an assistant professor, became an associate professor in 2022, and currently serves as the Academic Head of EHS. His research focuses on synthetic and mechanistic organometallic chemistry, particularly dearomative hydroelementation of Nheteroarenes and related cascade transformations.

Abstract

 In the first part of this seminar, we present our recent developments in transition metal (Rh, Co)catalyzed (asymmetric) double hydroboration of quinolines and pyridines.¹⁻³ Particular emphasis is placed on highly challenging, unprecedented ligandcontrolled regiodivergent double hydroboration of pyridines. As a catalytic platform, this methodology enables the selective synthesis of two pairs of multifunctionalized piperidine isomers.⁴ The origin of this regiodivergent ligand effect is elucidated through combined experimental and computational mechanistic studies. The second part of the presentation describes the extension of this substrate scope from pyridines to acyclic conjugated systems—including enals, enones, and enimines—by employing sustainable and straightforward Cobased catalytic systems.⁵ This unified catalytic approach establishes the first example of metalcatalyzed (regiodivergent) (asymmetric) double hydroelementation (E ≠ H) of pyridines, as well as the first (asymmetric) double hydroelementation (E ≠ H) of enones and enimines.

Announced by School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering.