Catalysis
Catalysis plays an essential role in modern chemical synthesis and processing. Catalysis research at the University of Chicago spans the fields of organic, inorganic, organometallic, physical, and biological chemistry to enable new transformations and to deepen our understanding of catalytic processes.
The complexity of catalytic processes, whether they occur in the coordination sphere of an organometallic complex, on a metal surface, or within an enzyme active site, provides exciting opportunities to test our understanding of fundamental chemical reactivity. Students and faculty leverage state of the art facilities for experimental and computational studies on campus and at Argonne National Laboratory to push the boundaries of catalysis science. These advances are leveraged to design and develop organic, organometallic, inorganic, and biological molecules, inorganic materials, and hybrids of these species (for example, catalytic MOFs, artificial metalloenzymes, and so on) for applications in renewable energy, selective synthesis, chemical biology, and much more.
