MPI CEC - Thomas Hobirk
When: 7 March 2024, 15–16 followed by mingle at LINXS
Where: at LINXS, workshop room on the 5th floor (Scheelevägen 19, Lund), with digital participation possibility (Zoom). Registered participants (online-only) will receive a zoom-link the same day as the event.
Title: Advanced spectroscopic studies of C-H bond activating enzymes and molecular catalysts
Speaker: Serena DeBeer, Professor and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion, Germany
Abstract
The ability to activate and functionalize C-H bonds in controlled and sustainable fashion remains one of the holy grails of chemistry. It is here that nature provides much inspiration, with enzymes such as methane monooxygenases enabling the direct and selective oxidation of methane to methanol - utilizing either a copper active site in the particulate form or a dinuclear iron site in the soluble form of the enzyme. Our understanding of the nature of these active sites and their mechanisms has greatly benefited from spectroscopic developments.
In the present talk, I will present our groups recent spectroscopic studies on methane monooxygenases, as well as recent work on lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases. Finally, 2p3d resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) spectroscopic development efforts focused on high-valent iron oxo model complexes will be presented. These RIXS studies provide a unique experimental probe of two-state reactivity, enabling the previously elusive spin forbidden triplet to quintet transitions to be experimentally observed and correlated directly to reactivity.
Bio
Serena DeBeer is a Professor and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany. She is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell University, an honorary faculty member at Ruhr University in Bochum, and the group leader of the PINK Beamline at the Energy Materials In‐Situ Laboratory at Helmholtz Zentrum in Berlin. She received her B.S. in Chemistry at Southwestern University in 1995 and her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2002. From 2002-2009, she was a staff scientist at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, before moving to her faculty position at Cornell. She is the recipient of a European Research Council Synergy Award (2019), the American Chemical Society Inorganic Chemistry Lectureship Award (2016), the Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry Early Career Award (2015), a European Research Council Consolidator Award (2013), a Kavli Fellowship (2012), and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2011). Research in the DeBeer group is focused on the development and application of advanced X-ray spectroscopic tools for understanding key mechanisms in biological, homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis.
Contact: Please contact josefin.martell@linxs.lu.se for any practical questions.
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