Assistant Professor Marvin Parasram was born and raised in The Bronx, NY. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from Stony Brook University, his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and did NRSA Postdoctoral training at Princeton. He began his independent career in 2020 at New York University.
Abstract: Heteroatom units, such as carbonyls, C(sp3)-OH and C(sp3)-NH2 bonds, are prevalent motifs in many medicinal compounds. Methods to incorporate these important functional groups at the expense of hydrocarbons reply on the use of non-commercial heteroatom transfer agents, precious transition metals, and/or costly engineered enzymes. Also, these methods often require exogenous oxidants to promote the C-heteroatom bonding event which greatly limits substrate scope. Our laboratory focuses on the employment of economical 1,3-dipoles as versatile reagents that can serve as the hydrocarbon activator and the heteroatom atom source for the heteroatom incorporation of aliphatic systems under benign visible-light irradiation. Our contributions involve the cleavage of alkenes leading to valuable carbonyl derivatives and the direct C–H oxidation of hydrocarbons via anaerobic oxygen-atom transfer from photoexcited nitroarenes. Using photoexcited azoxys, an anaerobic nitrogen atom transfer event can occur leading to aziridinatio of alkenes. Mechanistic studies reveal that the 1.3-dipoles are the sole photo-absorbing species which leads to the formation of diradical intermediates that are responsible for heteroatom transfer events.