About

Valentin Rodionov began his undergraduate studies in 1997 at the Higher Chemical College of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2000, after moving to the United States, he was accepted to the University of Maryland and promoted directly into the graduate program without having to complete an undergraduate degree. He earned his M.S. in 2002 and enrolled in the Ph.D. program at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA. At Scripps Dr. Rodionov worked under the guidance of Profs. M.G. Finn and K.B. Sharpless. His thesis project was focused on mechanistic investigation of copper (I) catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition, and provided the first glimpse of the inner workings of this most widely used “click” reaction (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2005, 44, p. 2210; and J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2007, 129, p. 12696). As a postdoctoral fellow with Professor J.M.J. Fréchet at the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Rodionov applied the powerful “click” chemistry approach to the development of enzyme-inspired catalytic polymers (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2010, 132, p. 2570). Since late 2010, Dr. Rodionov has been an Assistant Professor of Chemical Science at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia. The group has transitioned to Case Western Reserve University in 2018. Prof. Rodionov’s research interests are broadly focused on catalysis with soft materials and nanoscale systems capable of emergent behavior. The most active research directions are:

• Tailored Soft Materials for Catalysis and Transport/Encapsulation (Chem. Comm. 2014, 50, p. 7862; and ACS Catal. 2015, 5, p. 1313).
• Controlled Nanoenvironments for Catalysis (ACS Catal. 2015, 5, p. 2529; and Polym. Chem. 2016, 7, p. 2923).
• Emergent/Dynamic (Auto)catalytic Systems (ACS Comb. Sci. 2015, 17, p. 76; and Langmuir. 2015, 31, p. 2931).
• Molecular Catalysts for Electrooxidation of Water (ACS Catal. 2016, 6, p. 3092; and ACS Catal. 2016, 7, p. 4647).