Greg Moehring
Chair and Associate Professor
PhD, Purdue University
Office: Edison 243
Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday 8:30 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Phone: (732) 263-5350
E-mail: gmoehrin@monmouth.edu
Fall 2012 Courses
- Advanced Inorganic chemistry
- NMR Spectroscopy
Teaching Interests
- General Chemistry Lecture
- General Chemistry Lab
- NMR Spectroscopy
Biography
It is a pleasure to join the Department of Chemistry, Medical Technology, and Physics at Monmouth University. The department has considerable positive momentum with, among other things, expanding enrollment in our majors and increasing productivity for our faculty and student researchers. I look forward to contributing to that positive momentum.
My background is diverse. I grew up in the state of Washington and earned a BS in chemistry from Western Washington University. I earned a PhD in inorganic chemistry from Purdue University, where I worked with Richard Walton on the chemistry of rhenium polyhydride compounds. I did postdoctoral research at the University of British Columbia with Bill Cullen, Brian James, and Mike Fryzuk. My research looked at the selective reduction of prochiral imines into chiral amines at chiral catalyst analogs to Willkinson’s Catalyst.
I've had two stints as a professional chemist. I’ve worked at the Naval Medical Research Institute on a project directed towards the development of an artificial blood substitute. I’ve also worked for DuPont in a titanium dioxide production facility where I provided customer and production support. The bulk of my professional career, however, has been in academics. I taught for one year on the faculty of what was then University of Southwestern Louisiana. I spent sixteen years on the faculty of Governors State University where I also served as acting program coordinator. I left Governors State to accept the chair position in the Chemistry Department at Texas A&M University–Kingsville. I was at Kingsville for five years before coming to Monmouth this year as chair.
Research Interests
My research agenda focuses on the synthesis, physical properties, and applications of rhenium polyhydride compounds. Rhenium polyhydride compounds are typically compounds with a single rhenium metal atom at the center of the compound and four or more hydrogen atoms bound directly to the rhenium atom. Rhenium polyhydride compounds have some historical significance related to the catalytic activation of alkyl C-H bonds. The compound ReH7(PPh3)2 was the first compound known to catalytically activate alkane C-H bonds in homogeneous systems.
The structure of the first rhenium polyhydride compound with a sigma bond to an aromatic carbon center.
Hugh Felkin and coworkers demonstrated that ReH7(PPh3)2 serves as a catalyst for the transfer of hydrogen from alkanes to 3,3-dimethylbutene. The drawback to the above C-H bond activation reaction, however, is the low turnover number for the catalyst which is presumably due to the decomposition of the catalyst from side reactions which occur at the supporting tertiary phosphine ligands. Catalytic alkyl C-H bond activation is an area of current interest to the pharmaceutical industry. The development of active pharmaceutical ingredient synthetic routes which incorporate catalytic alkyl C-H bond activation would mean less chemical waste from such syntheses.
Dr. Moehring with Jan Wazio and Santosh Soparawalla and their poster presentation at a National ACS meeting.
Here at Monmouth I plan to pursue physical studies of rhenium polyhydride compounds and to explore the catalytic activation of alkyl C-H bonds by such compounds. Our work with C-H bond activation will examine two separate approaches. One approach will follow up on some interesting findings related to recent work in our lab. A second approach will look to develop potential rhenium polyhydride catalysts which are more robust than the current generation of such compounds. Our work will consist largely of inert atmosphere chemical syntheses and NMR characterizations.
