Brian Stoltz

Brian M. Stoltz is currently a professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. The primary focus of his research is chemical synthesis with an emphasis on expanding the scope of allylic alkylation for the preparation of complex molecules possessing unique structural, biological, and physical properties. His research involves the total synthesis of natural products such as dragmacidin F and (–)-cyanthiwigin F, and development of synthetic reactions to access quaternary stereocenters. Specifically, he has focused on the allylic alkylation of enolates, developing an enantioselective variant in 2004.

Several former members of the Stoltz laboratory have gone on to start research groups of their own, such as Richmond Sarpong (UC-Berkeley), Uttam Tambar (UT-Southwestern Medical Center), Neil Garg (UCLA), Jeremy May (University of Houston), Eric Ferreira (University of Georgia), Hosea Nelson (UCLA) and Wen-Bo 'Boger' Liu (Wuhan Univ.).

Education

Stoltz received his B.S. from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1993. He went on to earn his Ph.D. at Yale University, where he studied organic chemistry under the supervision of John L. Wood, completing his studies in 1997. Upon completion of his graduate work, he held a post-doctoral appointment in the laboratory of E. J. Corey at Harvard University from 1998 to 2000.

Awards and honors

• National Science Foundation Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2002)
• American Association for the Advancement of Science (2006)
• Sackler Prize (2009)
• ACS E.J. Corey Award (2009)
• Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award (2010)
• Mukaiyama Award (2015)

Current

At present he is the associate editor for the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry.