Our group is interested in the mechanisms and catalysis of organic reactions in water, which lends itself to the study of processes in biological systems. Biological systems are capable of performing a series of reactions involving enzymes, yielding a material that will have pronounced effects upon the organism involved. For those people invested in understanding the catalytic processes employed by biological systems, efforts are often hampered by incomplete knowledge of how a particular functionality reacts. Physical organic chemists can close this gap by performing fundamental studies that shed light on the lowest energy pathway, methods for catalyzing, and alternative reaction pathways for the functionality.

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