SEMINAR: Bayliss Seminar Series

Abstract: A variety of methodologies and/or combinations of methodologies have been developed in our labs for the synthesis of a diverse range of biologically active natural products. These methodologies include biotransformations, photoisomerisations, two-metal cross-couplings, reductive and oxidative cyclisations as well as redox neutral ones. Recent applications of such processes to various target compounds, including sesquiterpenes and alkaloids, will be described.1

Biographical Notes: Martin Banwell was born in New Zealand in 1954 and attended the Victoria University of Wellington from which he received the PhD in 1979. After a post-doctoral year in the US he moved to the University of Adelaide, then to the Universities of Auckland and Melbourne before joining the Australian National University in 1995 where he has remained ever since. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and has received various awards from the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, the most recent being the 2014 H. G. Smith Memorial Medal.

1. For representative examples of some of these processes see (a) Nugent, J.; Matoušová, E.; Banwell, M. G. Eur. J. Org. Chem. 2015, 3771-3778; (b) Lan, P.; Banwell, M. G.; Willis, A. C. Org. Lett. 2015, 17, 166–169; (c) Zhang, Y.; Banwell, M. G.; Carr, P. D.; Willis, A. C. Org. Lett. 2016, 18, 704–707; (d) Tang, F.; Banwell, M. G.; Willis, A. C. J. Org. Chem. 2016, 81, 2950-2957.