My students study the often fascinating reactions that take place when an electrical current is passed through a solution of organic compounds. We aim to develop useful processes than can not be carried by other organic chemical procedures. Recently we have begun studying processes in which solar energy is the source of the electrical current. Our solution to the traditional problem with solar energy - that it's only available on sunny days - by using the solar panel to charge a battery, which is then used to drive the electrochemical process. Thus we can carry out an electrochemical reaction in any weather and, equally importantly, do this in the laboratory, with the convenience of working under optimum conditions of temperature, access to monitoring equipment, etc. More undergraduates have worked in my laboratory than any other lab at Wesleyan, and most have gotten a paper published on their work.

Organic Chemistry: Synthetic and Mechanistic organic electrochemistry; metal-ion and metal complex mediated organic electrode reactions; electrochemical behavior of benzenoid and non-benzenoid aromatic hydrocarbons; electrochemically-driven enzymatic synthesis of amino acids.

I was born in Philadelphia, was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, received my PhhD from the University of Wisconsin, spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at Cal Tech, and have been on the Wesleyan faculty ever since.