About

All Things Metathesis was developed by Materia, Inc. for the two-fold purpose of establishing a knowledge resource on olefin metathesis and providing a setting for the growing number of metathesis users to discuss the technology. In light of the company’s evolving expertise in the area of olefin metathesis, Materia is committed to educating the academic and corporate communities on the benefits and applications of this Nobel Prize winning technology. All Things Metathesis provides general information on olefin metathesis and specific information on ruthenium based metathesis catalysts.

Contributing Authors

Andy Nickel
Andy grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and attended Temple University as an undergraduate. In college he studied chemistry and spent his free time playing rhythm guitar in a band. One day, he skipped band practice to attend a graduate student literature seminar entitled, “Ruthenium-Catalyzed Olefin Metathesis.” Despite the teasing he received from his band mates that day, he still spends much of his time thinking about this very topic. After earning his Ph.D in 2005 from Yale University in the field of natural product synthesis, Andy worked as a medicinal chemist for 3 years before joining Materia in the summer of 2008.

Tim Champagne
Tim was born in Los Alamitos, CA and grew up in Tustin—a small city in the heart of Orange County, CA. He attended CSU Fullerton while working at Lucky’s supermarkets as a dairy manager. Originally, he majored in mathematics and engineering, but switched to chemistry after taking organic chemistry during the summer. After graduating, Tim worked for two companies: Lightsense Technolgies developing chemical sensors and West Coast Analytical Services performing ICP-MS analyses. Later, he attended graduate school in chemistry at UC Irvine where he was fascinated by σ-bond metathesis with ƒ-element complexes. After 4 years and completing his Ph.D., Tim continued to work in the metathesis field and joined Materia in January of 2007.

Jean Baptiste Bourg
Jean-Baptiste (J-B) was born in Ambilly, France and grew up in the French Alps, where he especially enjoyed skiing. He studied chemistry in Paris, earning an engineering degree from Chimie ParisTech, and did research on ruthenium-catalyzed hydrogenation. The weather in Paris being a little too rainy, he decided to move to Riverside, California. He spent the next four years trying to isolate diradicals and carbenes, and eventually completed his Ph.D. Willing to apply his knowledge on carbene chemistry to olefin metathesis, J-B worked with Prof. Grubbs before joining Materia in fall 2008.

Paul Boothe
Paul grew up outside Pittsburgh, PA and began his chemistry career as a lab assistant for a cranky graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, before becoming a slightly less cranky graduate student himself while obtaining his Ph.D. at the University of Southern California. After a brief stint in the classroom, he retreated to the safety of the laboratory, joining Materia in 2006.

Diana Stoianova
Diana grew up in Sofia, Bulgaria and got her Masters degree at Sofia University. After she earned her Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Zurich in Switzerland she moved to the States for a post doc and never left. She ran her first metathesis reaction in Paul Hanson’s group at the University of Kansas, the reaction worked really well and everybody else in the group started doing metathesis. Diana joined Materia in the fall of 2002.

About Materia, Inc.

Materia, Inc. was founded in 1998 to commercialize olefin metathesis catalyst technology. To that end, the Company has developed an extensive intellectual property portfolio, which includes over 350 issued and pending patents (worldwide) covering not only ruthenium catalyst composition and manufacture, but also methods of using the technology to perform a wide variety of transformations and compositions of certain products.