Paul Chirik


Paul J. Chirik is an American chemist and currently holds the position of Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University. His expertise is in the field of Organometallic chemistry, particularly in sustainable and environmentally-friendly catalysis with earth abundant elements. In 2015, he was appointed Editor-in-Chief of Organometallics, a peer-reviewed journal published by the American Chemical Society. He has mentored over 30 PhD students and 20 postdoctoral associates. He has won several awards, including the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, the Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists, a Packard Fellowship in science and engineering, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award, an NSF Career Award, and a Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award.

Early life and career

Chirik was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on June 13, 1973. He graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor's of Science in Chemistry in 1995 from Virginia Tech having conducted research with Joseph Merola. He earned his Ph.D. with John Bercaw at Caltech studying the mechanism of metallocene-catalyzed olefin polymerization and hydrometallation chemistry in which he was recognized with the Hebert Newby McCoy Award. After a brief postdoctoral appointment with Professor Christopher C. Cummins at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology he joined the faculty at Cornell University in 2001 as an assistant professor. In 2006, he was promoted to associate professor, and in 2009, he was named the Peter J. W. Debye Professor of Chemistry.
In the course of his career, he has authored over 180 peer-reviewed, scientific publications, is inventor on over 15 patents and has been invited to give lectures and presentations in over 200 national and international seminars and conferences including the 2012 Falling Walls Conference in Berlin, where he gave a talk entitled "Breaking the Wall of Sustainable Chemistry: How Modern Alchemy Can Lead to Inexpensive and Clean Technology".

Research interests

Chirik has contributed to the field of catalysis with earth abundant Transition elements such as iron and cobalt, with the ultimate goal to free the pharmaceutical and other industries from overdependence on the scarce and expensive rare earth catalysts that are presently and commonly used. His group has utilized redox-active ligands to control electron flow with first row transition metals to enable multielectron chemistry. Chirik's catalysts are of interest for asymmetric hydrogenation and hydrosilylation of alkenes.
Chirik's research lies at the intersection of Organic and Inorganic chemistry and involves the development of sustainable methods in chemical synthesis. His research group explores the concept of "modern alchemy", whereby ligand design is used to transmute the reactivity of earth-abundant metals to mimic, or ideally surpass, the performance of precious metals. His group tackles pharmaceutically- and industrially-relevant problems using a combination of synthetic, spectroscopic, physical characterization and computational methods. The major research areas in his laboratory are catalysis with Earth-abundant metals, dinitrogen functionalization, and the interconversion of ammonia with its elements.

Catalysis with Earth-abundant metals

The core of Chirik's Earth-abundant metal catalysis program is the understanding and manipulation of electron flow, and its application to solving modern problems. Development efforts are specifically geared towards problems in the pharmaceutical, flavor, fragrance, petrochemical, and silicones industries. The broad catalysis concept of "metal-ligand cooperativity" popularized by Chirik, where electron changes occur concomitantly between the metal and the supporting ligand, led to the development of Earth-abundant catalysts based on iron and cobalt for asymmetric hydrogenation, hydrosilylation, and hydroboration of olefins with superior activities and selectivities to their precious metal counterparts as well as catalysts for unprecedented cycloaddition reactions.
Chirik has also developed Earth-abundant catalysts that operate in a more traditional sense, where the electron changes occur exclusively at the metal with the judicious choice of the supporting ligand. This led to the development of catalysts for asymmetric hydrogenation, hydrogen-isotope exchange, C–H borylation and cross coupling, reactions that are of tremendous importance to the pharmaceutical industry.

Nitrogen functionalization and interconversion of ammonia with its elements

Chirik also has a research program in the interconversion of ammonia with its constituent elements, N2 and H2. The forward reaction, where N2 is converted to ammonia and other value-added nitrogen-containing products is driven by the high carbon footprint associated with industrial ammonia synthesis by the Haber-Bosch process, whereas the reverse reaction, where ammonia is converted back into its elements, N2 and H2, is driven by the goal of developing carbon-neutral fuels.
Using early transition metals with organic ligands to form a rationally designed coordination environment, Chirik has developed new routes to convert molecular nitrogen into value-added nitrogen-containing products.
By utilizing proton-coupled electron transfer, Chirik has been able to cleave ammonia to form H2 using the concept of "coordination-induced weakening".

Awards