Dr Amit Kumar

Leverhulme Early Career Fellow

Researcher profile

Phone

+44 (0)1334 463859

Email

ak336@st-andrews.ac.uk

Biography

Amit completed his Integrated M.Sc. Chemistry (2007-2012) from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee where he was awarded the Institute Silver Medal for academic excellence and won several fellowships/research awards by DAAD, IIT-ParisTech, KVPY and INSPIRE (Govt of India) and Indian Academy of Science.  He then won the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship for his DPhil research at the University of Oxford (Balliol College). During his DPhil (2012-2016) he worked under the guidance of Prof. Andrew Weller in the area of synthetic organometallic chemistry and developed rhodium and iridium catalysts for the dehydrocoupling of amine-boranes. After completing his DPhil studies, Dr. Kumar was awarded the PBC (Planning and Budgeting Committee, Israel, 2016-2019) fellowship to work with Prof. David Milstein at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel where he was promoted to be the Senior Postdoc Fellow in 2019. In the Milstein research group Dr. Kumar  developed new pincer catalysts for small molecule activation and for the development of green and sustainable homogeneous catalysis based on dehydrogenation and hydrogenation reactions. Amit was awarded the FGS (Feinberg Graduate School) Prize for the outstanding achievements in postdoctoral research 2018 by the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Dr. Amit Kumar is currently a Leverhulme Trust Early Career fellow at the School of Chemistry, University of St. Andrews where he is working on the development of green catalytic reactions and hydrogen storage materials.

Research areas

Catalysis plays a major role in the production of food, pharmaceuticals and energy. Kumar Resarch Laboratory (KuRLa) is striving in the area of green homogeneous catalysis. The lab is focussed to develop new environmentally-benign and sustainable catalytic processes for the production of industrially useful chemicals from the cheap and inexpensive starting materials using pincer complexes. A significant effort is also being made to develop new chemical hydrogen storgae materials, preferrably liquid of high gravimetric storage capacity for which both dehydrogenation and hydrogenation (of the spent fuel) processes are facile.
For more information see the group website: https://aammiit.wixsite.com/mysite

Selected publications

• CO₂ activation by manganese pincer complexes through different modes of metal-ligand cooperation (Special issue on Breaking bonds over many timescales: in celebration of Robin Perutz?s 70th birthday)

  Kumar, A., Daw, P., Jalapa, N. A. E., Leitus, G., Shimon, L., Ben-David, Y. & Milstein, D., 21 Oct 2019, In : Dalton Transactions. 48, p. 14580-14584

  Research output: Contribution to journal ? Article

• C?C bond formation of benzyl alcohols and alkynes using a catalytic amount of KO^tBu: unusual regioselectivity through a radical mechanism

  Kumar, A., Janes, T., Chakraborty, S., Daw, P., Carmieli, R., Diskin-Posner, Y. & Milstein, D., 4 Mar 2019, In : Angewandte Chemie International Edition. 58, 11, p. 3373-3377

  Research output: Contribution to journal ? Article

• Direct synthesis of amides by acceptorless dehydrogenative coupling of benzyl alcohols and ammonia catalyzed by a manganese pincer complex: unexpected crucial role of base

  Daw, P., Kumar, A., Jalapa, N. A. E., Ben-David, Y. & Milstein, D., 7 Aug 2019, In : Journal of the American Chemical Society. 141, 31, p. 12202-12206

  Research output: Contribution to journal ? Article

• Manganese catalysed hydrogenation of carbamates and urea-derivatives

  Das, U., Kumar, A., Ben-David, Y., Iron, M. & Milstein, D., 21 Aug 2019, In : Journal of the American Chemical Society. 141, 33, p. 12962-12966

  Research output: Contribution to journal ? Article

• Formal oxidative addition of a C-H bond by a 16e iridium(I) complex involves metal-ligand cooperativity

  Kumar, A., Feller, M., Diskin-Posner, Y. & Milstein, D., 25 May 2018, In : Chemical Communications. 54, 42, p. 5365-5368

  Research output: Contribution to journal ? Article

• Iron precatalysts with bulky tri(tert?butyl)cyclopentadienyl ligands for the dehydrocoupling of dimethylamine?borane

  Turner, J., Chilton, N., Kumar, A., Whittell, G., Colebatch, A., Sparkes, H. I., Weller, A. S. & Manners, I., 21 Sep 2018, In : Chemistry - A European Journal. 24, 53, p. 14127-14136

  Research output: Contribution to journal ? Article

• Manganese catalyzed hydrogenation of organic carbonates to methanol and alcohols

  Kumar, A., Janes, T., Jalapa, N. A. E. & Milstein, D., 4 Sep 2018, In : Angewandte Chemie International Edition. 57, 37, p. 12252-12256

  Research output: Contribution to journal ? Article

• Selective hydrogenation of cyclic imides to diols and amines and its application in the development of a new liquid organic hydrogen carriers

  Kumar, A., Janes, T., Jalapa, N. A. E. & Milstein, D., 20 Jun 2018, In : Journal of the American Chemical Society. 140, 24, p. 7453-7457

  Research output: Contribution to journal ? Article

• Synthesis of pyrazines and quinoxalines via acceptorless dehydrogenative coupling routes catalyzed by manganese pincer complexes

  Daw, P., Kumar, A., Jalapa, N. A. E., Diskin-Posner, Y., Ben-David, Y. & Milstein, D., 7 Sep 2018, In : ACS Catalysis. 8, 9, p. 7734-7741

  Research output: Contribution to journal ? Article

• Direct synthesis of amides by the dehydrogenative coupling of amines with alcohols or esters catalysed by a new manganese pincer complex

  Kumar, A., Jalapa, N. A. E., Leitus, G., Diskin-Posner, Y., Avram, L. & Milstein, D., 2017, In : Angewandte Chemie International Edition. p. 14992 14996 p.

  Research output: Contribution to journal ? Article

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