Dr. Jeanne L. Bolliger


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Jeanne L. Bolliger carried out both her diploma work and Ph.D. at the University of Zurich which resulted in ten first author publications (including Angew. Chem. (1), Chem. Eur. J. (3), Adv. Synth. Catal. (3)). While working in the group of Dr. Christian Frech, she developed a simple synthesis for aminophospine-based palladium pincer complexes and tested these novel, highly active palladium catalysts in cross-coupling reactions. Dissemination of this at national and international conferences led to an opportunity for Dr. Bolliger to scale-up the synthesis and prepare the first batch of one of these aminophosphine-based palladium complexes to be sold by Sigma Aldrich. In the meantime, three of these palladium complexes are commercially available (Sigma Aldrich, product numbers 727733, 744220, and 744999).   

Having successfully applied in 2011 for 18 months of funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation, Dr. Bolliger continued her academic career at the University of Cambridge under the mentorship of Professor Jonathan R. Nitschke (supramolecular chemistry) which up to date has led to three first-author publications (J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem., and Chimia) and one co-authored paper (Angew. Chem.). One of Dr. Bolliger's main achievements of her postdoctoral stay in the Nitschke group was the development of water-soluble cage molecules capable of catalytically degrading organophosphorus insecticides. In March 2014, Dr. Bolliger joined the group of Prof. Matthew Gaunt where she spent nearly two years spearheading new research directions in the area of bioorthogonal chemistry (University of Cambridge) before moving back to the Nitschke group in January 2016.

In July 2016, Dr. Bolliger took up a position as Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in Organic Chemistry at Oklahoma State University where her research group is currently investigating the synthesis and functionalization of fused heterocycles. Her group is also investigating the electrochemical properties of these new heterocycles and has collaborations to explore their biological activities.

In 2022, Jeanne Bolliger is serving as the Chair of the Oklahoma Section of the American Chemical Society.