Durga Prasad Hari

Education:
M.Sc. (2010): IIT Madras, India (Thesis Advisor: Prof. S. Sankararaman)
Ph.D. (2014): University of Regensburg, Germany (Thesis Advisor: Prof. Burkhard Koenig)

Professional Experience:

• March 2021 to present: Assistant Professor, Department of Organic Chemistry, Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, India
• 2018- 2021: Marie Curie Research Fellow, University of Bristol, UK (Advisor: Prof. Varinder K. Aggarwal)
• 2014- 2018: Postdoctoral research Associate, EPFL, Switzerland (Advisor: Prof. Jerome Waser)

New concepts and strategies in organic chemistry are necessary to address the increasingly complex synthetic problems presented by contemporary natural product, biological, and organic material research. Our research group aims to discover and develop novel reaction strategies, which will enable access to versatile reactive intermediates for the mild and sustainable synthesis of useful molecular scaffolds. We are particularly interested in developing innovative new methodologies by harnessing the power of ring strain and the high reactivity of carbenes.

1. Ring-strain driven reaction discovery: Ring strain is a powerful driving force in chemical reactions, which promotes reactivity by releasing strain, allowing the facile construction of a multitude of valuable scaffolds. We aim to explore the versatility of strain release to design fundamentally new reactions in organic synthesis.
2. Synthesis and applications of new carbenes: The chemistry of diazo compounds as carbene precursors has been widely studied and has found a wide range of applications in organic synthesis and transition metal catalysis. However, only a few diazo precursors are known in the literature. We aim to develop new diazo precursors, especially those with versatile synthetic handles, and employ them in organic synthesis for the late-stage diversification of privileged molecules.
3. Deconstructive functionalizations: Direct methods for creating new chemical bonds (C-C and C-X) are effective tools for synthesis. However, these methods are occasionally insufficient to discover or diversify novel compounds with desirable properties. We are interested in developing deconstructive strategies to transform readily available cyclic compounds into functionalized acyclic structures.

• Durga Prasad Hari, R. Madhavachary, Valerio Fasano, Jack Haire and Varinder K. Aggarwal ‘Highly Diastereoselective Strain-Increase Allylborations: Rapid Access to Alkylidenecyclopropanes and Alkylidenecyclobutanes’ J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2021,DOI: 10.1021/jacs.1c01966 (Just accepted)
• Durga Prasad Hari, Guillaume Pisella, Matthew D. Wodrich, Artem V. Tsymbal and Jerome Waser ‘Low-Temperature Intramolecular [4+2] Cycloaddition of Allenes with Arenes for the Synthesis of Diene Ligands’ Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2021, 60, 5475.
• Durga Prasad Hari, Joseph C. Abell, Valerio Fasano and Varinder K. Aggarwal ‘Ring-Expansion Induced 1,2-Metalate Rearrangements: Highly Diastereoselective Synthesis of Cyclobutyl Boronic Esters’ J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2020, 142, 5515.
• Durga Prasad Hari and Jerome Waser ‘Enantioselective Copper Catalyzed Oxy-Alkynylation of Diazo Compounds’ J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2017, 139, 8420.
• Durga Prasad Hari and Jerome Waser ‘Copper-Catalyzed Oxy-Alkynylation of Diazo Compounds with Hypervalent Iodine Reagents’ J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2016, 138, 2190.
• Durga Prasad Hari, Thea Hering and Burkhard Koenig ‘The Photoredox catalyzed Meerwein Addition Reaction: Intermolecular Amino-Arylation of Alkenes’ Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 725.
• Durga Prasad Hari and Burkhard Koenig ‘The Photocatalyzed Meerwein Arylation: Classic Reaction of Aryl Diazonium Salts in a New Light’ Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 4734.
• Durga Prasad Hari, Peter Schroll and Burkhard Koenig ‘Metal free, Visible Light Mediated Direct C-H Arylation of Heteroarenes with Aryl Diazonium Salts’ J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2012, 134, 2958.
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