Guanidines as a Motif for Carbon Capture and Activation

Summary: “I am currently a 5th year student in the department of chemistry at the University of Toronto working with Prof. Jik Chin. My research ranges from stereoselective molecular recognition of amino acids to synthesis of unnatural peptide architectures to carbon capture and utilization using guanidines. We are particularly interested in using guanidines as a motif for carbon capture and utilization as it is a synthetic analogue of biotin (vitamin B7) which is an essential co-factor that Mother Nature uses for enzymatic carboxylation reactions. And using Mother Nature as inspiration, we aim to develop novel guanidine catalysts to capture and transform carbon dioxide into common chemical building blocks for the pharmaceutical and materials industries.”