Professor Darren Dixon

Professor Dixon’s research group strives to invent new molecular tools, catalysts and reactions that enable scientists in academia and industry to make valuable molecules for the first time, or much more quickly than was possible previously. One major theme of their work is to discover and develop new strategic bond-forming reactions from functional groups (groups of atoms bonded in a specific way) that are ubiquitous in the natural world but had previously been considered inert or highly resistant to bond formation. Enabling new reactivity from these abundant molecules can unlock applications that were previously considered impossible.

Biography

Professor Darren J Dixon studied chemistry at the University of Oxford where he received his Masters degree in 1993 and his DPhil in 1997 for work supervised by Professor Stephen G Davies. After postdoctoral work with Professor Steven V Ley CBE, FRS, he joined the faculty at the department of chemistry in Cambridge in 2000. In 2004, he was appointed Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester and, in 2007, he was promoted to Reader. In 2008, Darren moved to his current post at the University of Oxford where he is Professor of Chemistry and the Knowles-Williams Fellow in Organic Chemistry at Wadham College. Darren’s catalysis and synthetic organic chemistry research focuses on discovering new catalyst-enabled reactivity, developing new (enantioselective) synthetic methodologies, and exploring new strategies for simplifying complex molecule synthesis.