Bruce H. LipshutzBruce Lipshutz, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at UC Santa Barbara (UCSB), received his Ph.D. at Yale in 1977, after which he moved as an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Research Fellow to Harvard University to work with Nobel Laureate E. . Corey. After two years he relocated to southern California at UCSB, taking an Assistant Professor position, and in 1989 became a full Professor of Chemistry. After over 25 years on the faculty at UCSB, his research group left traditional organic synthesis and began the journey of converting organic chemistry into a sustainable discipline, focused on the “switch” to Nature’s chosen medium: water. The Lipshutz research group continues to develop new technologies in green chemistry, with the specific goal being to get organic solvents out of organic reactions, as organic solvents are, by far, responsible for most of the organic waste created by the chemical enterprise and derive mainly from the world’s finite petroleum reserves. To accomplish this goal, the concept of “designer” surfactants has been introduced within the area of aqueous micellar catalysis. The nanoparticles that form in water from these amphiphiles act as nanoreactors, enabling key transition metal-catalyzed cross-couplings, and many other of the most common reactions to be carried out in water under mild conditions. The group has also focused its attention on developing new catalysts for key Pd- and several other transition metal-catalyzed reactions that enable C-C, C-N, and C-H bond formation typically at the parts per million level of the metal. Most recently, these newly developed technologies in chemo-catalysis are being merged with enzymatic processes, commonly referred to “chemoenzymatic catalysis”, which enable tandem, 1-pot reactions in water. For these efforts over the past 15 years, several awards both in traditional and green chemistry have been received, most notably the EPA’s Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award, the American Chemical Society’s Green Chemistry Institute’s Peter Dunn Award, and the H. C. Brown Award for Creativity in Organic Synthesis. Read More Read Less