2022 Hottel Lecture: Donna Blackmond

Physical and Chemical Models for the Emergence ofBiological Homochirality

Donna G. Blackmond

The John C. Martin Endowed Chair in Chemistry

Chemistry Department Chair Scripps Research Institute

Prof. Blackmond received a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University. She has held professorships in chemistry and in chemical engineering in the US, Germany, and the UK. She has worked in the pharmaceutical industry at Merck & Co., Inc., where she pioneered a group involved in reaction engineering and chemical process understanding. She is the inaugural John C. Martin Endowed Chair in Chemistry and is Professor and Department Chair of Chemistry at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California. She holds joint US/UK citizenship. Prof. Blackmond’s research focuses on mechanistic studies of organic reactions, including asymmetric catalysis. She pioneered the methodology of “Reaction Progress Kinetic Analysis (RPKA)” for fundamental mechanistic studies of complex organic reactions as well as for streamlining pharmaceutical process research.