Christian Wolf, PhD, Professor of Chemistry and Director of Medicinal Chemistry, Georgetown University

The Department of Chemistry Presents:  Dr. Christian Wolf, Professor of Chemistry and Director of Medicinal Chemistry, Georgetown University

The advances of high-throughput experimentation technology and machine learning have revolutionized the pace of scientific progress and enabled previously inconceivable discoveries, in particular when used in tandem. The importance of chiral compounds routinely encountered in chemical development programs together with the constant search for methods amenable to micro-scaling and high-throughput screening, for example of asymmetric reactions, have directed increasing attention to chiroptical sensing systems.

Our group has demonstrated how the combination of chirality sensing with powerful chemometric tools that achieve orthogonal data fusion and spectral deconvolution allows streamlined analysis of the absolute configuration, stereoisomeric composition and concentration of structurally analogous – and therefore particularly challenging – chiral target compounds without laborious and time-consuming physical isolation (see Figure 1). To this end, major obstacles originate from the difficulty with quantitative deconvolution of a massive amount of spectroscopic data generated by simultaneous sensing of co-present chiral analytes and the low resolution of inherently broad and largely overlapping CD and UV absorption bands. Several examples demonstrating that this can be addressed by integrating robust, broadly applicable chiroptical sensing assays with readily available achiral probes and chemometric tools capable of deciphering highly convoluted, multi-modal spectral information will be discussed.^1-3  

BIO

Professor Wolf received his PhD and BS from the University of Hamburg, Germany.  His Dissertation Title is "Synthesis, Enantioseparation and Investigation of the Conformational Stability of Axially Chiral Biphenyls".  His advisor was Professor Wilfried A. Konig.  He was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Reading, UK and University of Aix-Marseille III, France.  Professor Wolf followed with an Alexander von Humboldt Feodor Lynen Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Illinois and Senior Scientist, Chemical Development, R&D, SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals.  He then joined Georgetown University, Chemistry Department as Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and onto full Professor as well as Director of Medicinal Chemistry for Georgetown University.

1. Sripada, A.; Thanzeel. F. Y.; Wolf, C. Chem 2022, 8, 1734.
2. Hassan, D. S.; Wolf, C. Nat. Comm. 2021, 12, 6451.
3. De los Santos, Z. A.; MacAvaney, S.; Russell, K.; Wolf, C. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2020, 59, 2440.