Jeremy May

Jeremy May
Assistant Professor
	Office: 136 Fleming (Chemistry Office) Phone: (713) 743-2701 Fax: (713) 743-2709 Email: jeremy.may.UH@gmail.com Education B.S. University of Utah (Cum Laude), 2000 Ph.D. California Institute of Technology, 2006 Postdoctoral Fellow, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Honors, Fellowships, etc. Abbott Labs Fellow, 2001 American Chemical Society Organic Division Fellow, 2003 Bristonl-Meyers Squibb Fellow, 2003 NIH/NCI Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellow, 2005

Research Interests

Synthetic Organic Chemistry and Methods Development

      The goal of the May group is to make molecules of interest and utility. This goal encompasses the development of powerful synthetic methodologies as well as their application to the synthesis of complex molecules. For example, chemical transformations using transition metal catalysts that stabilize carbene and ylide-like intermediates are sought to form densely functionalized bonds of great utility to the synthetic chemist and to do so with chemo- and stereoselectivity. Furthermore, cascade reactions allow for a variety of bond forming and bond breaking events to occur in one reaction setup, thus providing significant chemical transformation with high efficiency.
      Target molecules, such as those shown below, are principally complex natural products that exhibit a challenging architecture and intriguing biological properties. Other targets include molecular recognition motifs for directed chemical reactions or molecular biology applications. These compounds have value for therapeutic target identification, pharmaceutical development, protein sequencing, and chemical biology.

      Training in the lab includes education in the fields of organometallics, organic synthesis, reaction development, mechanism elucidation, natural product chemistry, structural elucidation, scientific writing, and other skills necessary for the practice of chemistry in an academic or commercial environment.

Recent Publications

May, Jeremy A., and Stoltz, Brian M. The Structural and Synthetic Implications of the Biosynthesis of the Calycanthaceous Alkaloids, the Communesins, and Nomofungin. Tetrahedron, 2006, 62, 5262-5271.

Julian, Ryan R.; May, Jeremy A.; Stoltz, Brian M.; and Beauchamp, J. L. Biomimetic Approaches to Gas Phase Peptide Chemistry: Combining Selective Binding Motifs with Reactive Carbene Precursors to Form Molecular Mousetraps. International Journal of Mass Spectrometry, 2003, 228(2-3), 851-64.

Julian, Ryan R.; May, Jeremy A.; Stoltz, Brian M.; and Beauchamp, J. L. Gas Phase Synthesis of Charged Copper and Silver Fischer Carbenes from Diazomalonates: Mechanistic and Conformational Considerations in Metal Mediated Wolff Rearrangements. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2003, 125(15), 4478-4486.

May, Jeremy A., Zeidan, Ryan K., and Stoltz, Brian M. Biomimetic Approach to Communesin B (a.k.a. Nomofungin). Tetrahedron Letters, 2003, 44, 1203-1205.

Julian, Ryan R.; May, Jeremy A.; Stoltz, Brian M.; and Beauchamp, J. L. Molecular Mousetraps: Gas-Phase Studies of the Covalent Coupling of Noncovalent Complexes Initiated by Reactive Carbenes Formed by Controlled Activation of Diazo Precursors. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2003, 42(9), 1012-1015 (cover article).

May, Jeremy A. and Stoltz, Brian M. Non-Carbonyl-Stabilized Metallocarbenoids in Synthesis: The Development of a Tandem Rhodium-Catalyzed Bamford-Stevens/Thermal Aliphatic Claisen Rearrangement Sequence. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2002, 124(42), 12426-12427.

Julian, Ryan R.; Akin, Minta; May, Jeremy A.; Stoltz, Brian M.; and Beauchamp, J. L. Molecular Recognition of Arginine in Small Peptides by Supramolecular Complexation with Dibenzo-30-Crown-10 Ether. International Journal of Mass Spectrometry, 2002, 220(1), 8796.