Michael Organ's Biography

Michael Organ, Professor and Director of the Centre for Catalysis Research and Innovation , University of Ottawa

Dr. Organ received his PhD in 1992 at the University of Guelph under the tutelage of Professor Gordon L. Lange. He then was an NSERC Postdoctoral Scholar in the laboratory of Professor Barry M. Trost at Stanford (1994). His independent career started at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis in 1994 after which he moved in 1997 to York University in Toronto where he rose through the ranks to full professor. Effective January 2016, he is the new Director of the Centre for Catalysis Research and Innovation (CCRI) at the University of Ottawa. His group pioneered the concept of microwave-assisted, continuous flow organic synthesis as well as several unique technologies that underpin these efforts. These include new microwave applicator design, metal-film coated flow reactors to promote organic transformations, extreme temperature and pressure reactor and process design, continuous in-line analysis, and hands-free, intelligent process optimization and monitoring using in-house created software. His group’s effort in catalysis has led to the creation of a broadening series of N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC)-based organometallic complexes that have shown unsurpassed reactivity and selectivity in a wide number of cross-coupling applications. This family of catalysts (coined PEPPSI for pyridine-enhanced precatalyst preparation, stabilization, and initiation) has been commercialized and is used widely including at scale in the commercial manufacuring of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API). Dr. Organ is an SFI Walton Fellow (2002), a Xerox Foundation Fellow (2007), a Merck-Frosst Canadian Academic Development Program Fellow (2007), the Naeja Pharmaceuticals Lecturer at University of Alberta (2008), a JSPS Fellow (Japan, 2010), an Agilent Laboratories Fellow (2011), and was awarded an NSERC Accelerator Supplement (2013). In 2016 he was awarded the Raymond U. Lemieux Award for Organic Chemistry by the Canadian Society for Chemistry. In 2017 he was awarded the Encyclopedia of Reagents for Organic Synthesis (EROS) 2017 “Best Reagent Award”. This year Dr. Organ received the NSERC John C. Polanyi Award, given to an individual or team whose research has led to a recent outstanding advance in any field of the natural sciences or engineering. Professor Organ’s research on the structure of alkyl- and aryl organozincs as it relates to the mechanism of Negishi Reaction was called “one of the most Notable Discoveries in Synthetic Chemsitry in 2014” by Chemical and Engineering News. Dr. Organ and his research career were profiled in Angewandte Chemie (2013). He started and has run two spin-out companies successfully since 1998. Dr. Organ was appointed to the international advisory boards of ACS Combinatorial Science (2002), The Journal of Flow Chemistry (2011), Chemistry, A European Journal (2013) and ChemCatChem (2016).