
Synthetic Organic Chemistry and Catalysis Johns Hopkins University New Chemistry Building 315 3400 North Charles St. Baltimore, MD 21218 Phone: 410.516.6448 Email: lectka@jhu.edu Lectka Group Website PhD - Cornell University NIH Post Doctoral Fellow - Harvard University Research in the Lectka Group centers around the development of fundamentally new catalytic, asymmetric reactions to yield products of academic and pharmaceutical interest. Along those lines, utility is a paramount goal. For example, we have recently developed the first catalytic synthesis of b-lactams in high enantioselectivity, employing chiral nucleophiles as catalysts, and are at present developing new catalytic halogenation reactions, representing a relatively unexplored frontier in organic chemistry. In close association with reaction development, we study in detail the mechanisms of our new reactions in order to optimize processes for large-scale production of medicinally interesting compounds. Asymmetric catalysis on solid phase supports and reaction columns is also of current interest in our group, and several topical projects are now underway |