Professor Michael Neidig

Background

Originally from a dairy farming community in rural Pennsylvania, Michael received his B.A. in chemistry from Colgate University, an M.Phil. in chemistry from the University of Cambridge, and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Stanford University in 2007. After brief stops at Dow Chemical and Los Alamos National Lab, Michael was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Rochester in 2011 with subsequent promotion to Associate Professor in 2017, Professor in 2020 and the Marshall D. Gates, Jr. Professor of Chemistry in 2021. He moved to the University of Oxford in 2022 as Professor of Chemistry and Tutorial Fellow in Inorganic Chemistry at Magdalen College.

Teaching

All aspects of inorganic chemistry.

Research Interests

Research in the Neidig group spans synthetic and mechanistic organometallic chemistry, catalysis and physical-inorganic chemistry. One major area of interest focuses on elucidating active catalyst structure and mechanism in earth abundant metal catalysed transformations for organic synthesis to foster and facilitate sustainable catalyst and methodology development. Additional areas of interest include synthetic, spectroscopic and reactivity studies in molecular f-element chemistry as well as spectroscopic and electronic structure studies in support of broader research efforts across a range of inorganic, bioinorganic and materials chemistry systems.

Selected Publications

1. Effective alkyl-alkyl cross-coupling with an iron-Xantphos catalyst: Mechanistic and structural insights, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2025, e202413566. DOI: 10.1002/anie.202413566
2. Iron-catalyzed stereoselective C-H alkylation for simultaneous construction of C-N axial and C-central chirality, Nat. Commun. 2024, 15, 3503.  DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-47589-7  
3. Insight into radical initiation, solvent effects, and biphenyl production in iron-bisphosphine cross-couplings, ACS Catal. 2023, 12, 8987-8996. DOI: 10.1021/acscatal.3c02008
4. A TMEDA-iron adduct reaction manifold in iron-catalyzed C(sp²)-C(sp³) cross-coupling reactions, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2022, 61, e202114986 DOI: 10.1002/acie.202114986
5. General method for iron-catalyzed multicomponent radical cascades/cross-couplings,  Science 2021, 374, 432-439. DOI: 10.1126/science.abj6005