Department of Chemistry
The Johns Hopkins University
138 Remsen Hall
3400 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21218

Gerald J. Meyer
Department Chair

Phone 410-516-7429
Fax 410-516-8420
chemdept@jhu.edu

Thomas Lectka

Organic, Inorganic, Medicinal, and Computational Chemistry

Johns Hopkins University
New Chemistry Building 315
3400 North Charles St.
Baltimore, MD 21218

Phone:  410.516.6448
Email:  lectka@jhu.edu
Lectka Group Website

Ph.D. - Cornell University
Alexander von Humboldt Fellow - Universität Heidelberg
NIH Postdoctoral Fellow - Harvard University

Research in our group employs the formidable tools of organic and inorganic chemistry in equal measures to develop fundamentally new catalytic reactions of academic and pharmaceutical interest. Metal catalysis assumes a central theme; various new asymmetric processes, aliphatic fluorination, and selective bond activation the primary goals. Study of reaction mechanisms through kinetics, EPR, NMR, voltammetry, crystallography, advanced computations (DFT and MP2), and other techniques accompanies reaction development.

Along with brand new reactions, we also seek to make brand new species never seen before in nature, but that possess unusual or unanticipated properties; our recent synthesis of the first fluoronium ion in solution (first predicted by DFT theory) is a case in point.