Rate My Professor Thomas Gianetti

Thomas Gianetti is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The University of Arizona. He earned a B.S. and M.Sc. in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering from CPE Lyon, France, in 2009, a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2014 under the supervision of Professors John Arnold and Robert G. Bergman, and completed an ETH Postdoctoral Fellowship at ETH Zürich, Switzerland, from 2014 to 2017 with Professor Hansjörg Grützmacher. Gianetti joined The University of Arizona as an Assistant Professor in 2017 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2023. His research program centers on the development of new chemical structure platforms, particularly fused heterocyclic stable carbocations, enabling advances in photoinduced chemical catalysis, ligand frameworks for organometallic chemistry, and next-generation solution-phase electrode materials for batteries. These platforms function as Lewis acids, Lewis acidic ligands for metal complexes, photocatalysts for bond formation and cleavage, and electrolytes for redox flow batteries used in energy storage.

Students in the Gianetti group receive training in organic and inorganic synthesis, air-sensitive organometallic synthesis, solid-state synthetic methods, and homogeneous, photo, and electrocatalysis. Characterization techniques employed include single-crystal and powder X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, multinuclear NMR, UV/vis, IR, EPR spectroscopy, and cyclic voltammetry. Gianetti has earned prestigious awards including the 2021 NSF CAREER Award, Cottrell Scholar Award, Thieme Chemistry Journal Award, 2022 University of Arizona Early Career Scholar Award and Early Career Innovation & Entrepreneurship Award, 2023 Galileo Circle Curie Awardees, 2019 American Chemical Society Doctoral New Investigator Award, and 2015-2017 ETH Postdoctoral Fellowship. Notable publications from his independent career include “Photoredox α-Arylation of Cyclic Ketone Compounds” in Nature Synthesis (2022), “Helical Carbenium: A Versatile Organic Photoredox Catalyst in Red Light-Mediated Reactions” in Journal of the American Chemical Society (2020), and “Stable Helicenium Radicals: Synthesis, Structure, Optical Properties, and Photocatalysis” in Chemical Science (2020).