Today we celebrated the Engle Lab Anniversary with a lunch at the Sky Deck! It finally warmed up in San Diego, and we enjoyed sitting outside having a cold beer or an ice cream. We are excited to see what new discoveries the next year will bring!

Undergraduate intern Madeline Fitzgerald is visiting the lab from Davidson College. Madeline previously worked in the group of Prof. Hanna Key on the application of enzyme catalysis in organic reactions. She joins the lab as a SURF fellow and will be working with Amit and Madison on palladium catalysis. Welcome to the group, Madeline!

We are welcoming three new members of the lab.

Drason is a new PhD student. He did his undergraduate work with Prof. William Wuest at Emory University.

Calvin joins the lab as a visiting student from HKUST and will be exploring tungsten catalysis with Camille.

Giada is a rising senior at Montrose High School and is doing an internship over the summer working with Skyler on copper catalysis.

Welcome to the Engle lab!

Today we report a unique approach to heterocycle synthesis, in which a C(sp³)–H bond and a C(sp³)–X (X = N, O, or S) undergo catalytic coupling with an ambiphilic aryl halide under Pd(II)/Pd(IV) catalysis. The reaction leverages a C(sp³)–H activation/β-X elimination strategy for strong bond cleavage previously developed by our lab. The method can be used to prepare difficult-to-access non-proteinogenic amino acids from methionine and transfigure unstrained heterocyclic starting materials. Congrats to the entire project team: graduate student Hui-Qi, visiting undergrad Jing-Chen, and the fantastic group of collaborators from Pfizer!

Click here for a link to the paper in Angewandte Chemie, International Edition, click here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.202306581

As a reminder, a pre-print of this work was deposited in May 2023: https://chemrxiv.org/engage/chemrxiv/article-details/645c06c6f2112b41e956d61a

In the lab’s most recent review article, Taeho and Omar summarize the state of play in asymmetric Pd- and Ni-catalyzed dicarbofunctionalization. This emerging suite of reactions has undergone rapid development in the last decade, yet there are numerous lingering problems remaining to address to unlock the full potential of this transformation in organic synthesis. Thanks to the editorial team at Synthesis for the invitation to contribute, and congrats to Taeho and Omar.

For a link to the publication in Synthesis, click here: https://www.thieme-connect.com/products/ejournals/abstract/10.1055/a-2108-9549

After 1.5 years of working in the Engle lab, we bid farewell to Anna! During her productive stay in the group, she worked on projects in collaboration with both Taeho and Wenji. We celebrated Anna’s achievements with a lab-wide lunch. Anna is graduating from Rancho Bernardo high school, and she will be starting her undergraduate studies at MIT in the fall. We wish Anna the best of luck in all her future endeavors!

Congrats to the Engle lab’s newest doctor, Hui-Qi Ni!

Hui-Qi’s Ph.D. research focused on streamlining the synthesis of carbo- and heterocycles. She spearheaded the development of palladium-catalyzed alkene annulation reactions to obtain these motifs. Hui-Qi will soon start her postdoc in the lab of Prof. Nathanael Gray at Stanford.