Professor Steven Nolan is a world-renowned expert in organometallic chemistry and homogeneous catalysis. He has studied and developed members of a class of ligands, the N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHC) that have permitted the stabilization/increased activity of transition metal catalysts and thereby enabled very challenging organic transformations.  Nolan is known for the discovery of second-generation olefin metathesis catalysts, well-defined palladium centered complexes for cross-coupling catalysis and gold-NHC complexes that have become the standards in gold-mediated organic transformations. The Nolan group has explored numerous grand challenges that include the functionalization of C-H bonds and the activation/functionalization of CO2.  Nolan has designed a plethora of Late Transition-metal catalysts making possible hydrogenation, hydrosilylation, C-N and C-C bond formation, rearrangement and addition reactions, among many transformations. Nolan has more than 25 years experience in catalyst design and inorganic, organometallic and organic synthesis.