Meet Thomas
Thomas was born in Cleveland, Ohio and obtained his B.A. in Chemistry from Vassar College in 2016. During his undergraduate studies, Thomas developed a catalytic Rh-Ir system for the synthesis of chiral amines from achiral, petroleum-derived hydrocarbons in the Lab of Professor Tanski. Before his graduate studies, Thomas participated in an REU at the University of Kansas, where he conducted research in the field of organocatalysis under the direction of Professor Clift, and was an Amgen/CENTC Scholar at Berkeley, where he studied the site-selective C–H alkylation of simple arenes with alkyl halides in the Lab of Professor Hartwig. In 2016, he began his Ph.D. with Professor Toste at UC Berkeley where his work focused on creating methods to access challenging fluorinated motifs. Thomas developed the first copper-catalyzed asymmetric, β-fluoride elimination strategy to generate axially chiral, tetrasubstituted, monofluoroallenes and established a gold-catalyzed, stereoselective hydrofluorination of electron-deficient alkynes. When he is not in lab, Thomas enjoys playing golf, going to the gym, and exploring his surroundings.
thoconnor ‘at’ ucla.edu (He|him|his)
