Reto Dorta

Reto Dorta studied chemistry at the University of Neuchatel and the University of Salerno. He joined Professor Georg Süss-Fink's group at the University of Neuchatel for his Diploma work (1997) and subsequently moved to the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), where he earned his doctoral degree under Professor David Milstein in 2002. He then transferred to the University of New Orleans for a one-year postdoctoral stay with Professor Steven P. Nolan. Soon after joining Professor John E. Bercaw at the California Institute of Technology for a second postdoc, he was awarded an Alfred Werner Assistant Professorship and moved to the Organic Chemistry Institute at the University of Zürich in May 2005. In December 2011, he took up his current position as Associate Professor at the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Western Australia and was promoted to Professor in 2014.

Our research is directed toward the preparation of reactive transition metal complexes for stoichiometric and catalytic applications. We have focused our attention on the development of new chiral and non-chiral auxiliary ligand systems which are able to bind, activate and functionalize the substrates at the metal center. Research is now at a stage where catalytic trials involving these new ligands are underway. During the next years we should therefore be able to get a good overview on their catalytic potential and we should be able to modify existing ligand/metal combinations accordingly. The ultimate goal of the research program will be to identify new ligand families and their corresponding metal complexes for new, more selective or more widely applicable catalytic transformations.