About the Speaker

Prof. Punniyamurthy received a Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (Professor J. Iqbal, 1995). After postdoctoral studies at North Dakota State University (Professor M. P. Sibi, 1995–1996), Kyushu University (Professor T. Katsuki, 1997– 1999), and Montpellier University (Professor A. Vioux and Professor J. J. E. Moreau, 2000–2001), he joined the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati in 2001 and became HAG Professor in 2015. He has produced 23 Ph.D. scholars and 36 M.Sc. students having 140 publications with 7000 citations and h-index 43. He has been visiting Professor at Oxford University (2007), Kyushu University (2012) and The Scripps Research Institute San Diego (2013) and the recipient of UKERI (2007), JSPS Invitation (2012) and Fulbright (2013) research fellowships as well as CRSI Bronze medal (2015). He is also an elected fellow of The Indian Academy of Sciences (2015), The National Academy of Sciences (2018) and The Royal Society of Chemistry (2014). His research interests include new reactions for sustainable synthetic organic transformations.

Title of The Talk

Regioselective Synthesis and Functionalization of Medicinally Important Heterocyclic Scaffolds

Harnessing the reactivity of three-membered ring systems as a 1,3-zwitterionic intermediates in nucleophilic ring-opening and cycloaddition is reported a dime a dozen. However, employing them in cascade transformations with metal playing a dual role via nucleophilic ring-opening blending with C-H functionalization is emerging as a stepping stone for heterocyclic synthesis.1-3. Considering this synthetic space, divergent synthesis of saturated oxa/aza-heterocycles has been accomplished via the aforementioned strategy (Figure 1).1-3 The mechanistic blueprints entails that a single catalyst plays a dual role both as a Lewis acid as well as a redox catalyst. The synthesis of a privileged class of ubiquitous heterocycles, viz: tetrahydroquinoline, tetrahydro-pyridazine, piperazine, oxazolidine and imidazolidine is achieved. Expending chiral counterpart of such ring systems unveils the stereospecific construction of enantio-enriched functional building blocks.