Research in the Goldberg lab is guided by an interest in addressing fundamental questions in inorganic and bioinorganic chemistry. Such questions include: why does Nature select a specific metal ion/ligand set to accomplish a particular reaction? what is the mechanism of action of metalloenzymes that mediate these metal-based reactions? how can we build ligands suitable for stabilizing reactive, catalytically relevant transition metal intermediates? what ligand/metal design features will allow us to catalyze important transformations?

In pursuit of answering these questions, we hope to determine guiding principles that can be used to build small-molecule transition metal complexes with useful functions and practical applications, such as in the development of powerful, selective and efficient catalysts.

The techniques and methods in our lab span a broad range, including inorganic synthesis to prepare new transition metal complexes, and organic synthesis for the design and preparation of new polydentate ligands.  We perform a variety of studies aimed at elucidating the structures, spectroscopic features, reactivity patterns, and mechanistic behavior (e.g. kinetics) of these new complexes. This work involves spectroscopic and theoretical methods such as UV-vis, EPR, resonance Raman, EXAFS, DFT calculations, and other techniques in our lab or together with expert collaborators.