Rate My Professor Andrew Weller

The research of Professor Weller and his group centers on synthetic organometallic chemistry and catalysis, with a particular emphasis on generating and stabilizing transition metal complexes of low coordination number that display novel C–H, B–H, and C–C bonding modes through agostic or sigma interactions. This work explores the fundamentals of their synthesis, bonding, structure, and reactivity, alongside applications in catalytic bond activations such as C–H, B–H, and C–C transformations for producing platform chemicals, new materials, and fine chemicals, including dehydropolymerization processes and solid-state molecular organometallic chemistry. Among his accolades are the European Research Council Advanced Grant for the PRECISION-SMOM project worth €2.5 million over five years (2025–2030), EPSRC Established Career Fellowship (2015–2022), Royal Society of Chemistry Frankland Award (2016), and inaugural Dalton Transactions European Lectureship (2008). He has held numerous visiting positions, including Peter Wall Institute Scholar at UBC (2013/14), Howard Fellow at UNSW (2015), and lectureships at UCLA (2020) and Indiana University (2022). Select publications include “Mechanistic Insight into Molecular Crystalline Organometallic Heterogeneous Catalysis Through Parahydrogen Based Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Studies” (J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2023), “Controlled Synthesis of Well-Defined Polyaminoboranes on Scale Using a Robust and Efficient Catalyst” (J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2021), “Single-Crystal to Single-Crystal Addition of H2 to [Ir(iPr-PONOP)(propene)][BArF4]” (Organometallics, 2022), and “Dehydropolymerization of H3B·NMeH2 Mediated by Cationic Iridium(III) Precatalysts” (ACS Catal., 2022).