Atomic Precision as a Path Towards Precious Metal-Free Catalysts

Please join Yale Chemistry for a Silliman Seminar in inorganic chemistry with Prof. Gwendolyn Bailey, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry at University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. Summary: The global transition toward a secure energy economy is constrained by our reliance on scarce, precious metals, highlighting an urgent need for the development of catalysts composed of earth-abundant elements. While multinary metal chalcogenides offer a vast, programmable design landscape for replacing these critical materials, their cooperative, multi-center mechanisms remain a "black box" that hinders rational optimization. In this talk, I will describe the use of atomically precise molecular clusters as a model platform to deconstruct this complexity. Leveraging the unparalleled structural control and rigorous physical and kinetic characterization accessible to these discrete models, we demonstrate how mechanistic complexities can be deconvoluted to yield predictable structure-function relationships, bypassing traditional trial-and-error discovery. In addition, we show how well-defined supramolecular interactions provide a secondary handle to rationally tune cluster electronic structure and reactivity. Overall, these studies illustrate how atomic precision enables the rational design of functional materials needed to orchestrate the diverse chemical transformations requisite for a sustainable future. Bio: Prof. Gwen Bailey an Honors B.Sc. in chemistry from the University of British Columbia (2012), where her research on metal-based radiopharmaceuticals with Professor Chris Orvig was recognized with the Lefevre Medal & Prize in Honors Chemistry. There, she also complemented her academic training doing industrial research at Arbutus Biopharma (Burnaby, BC) and Xerox Research Center Canada, developing lipid-based siRNA delivery vesicles and organic electronics. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Ottawa with Professor Deryn Fogg as an NSERC CGS-D fellow, uncovering previously unrecognized decomposition pathways in commercial second-generation olefin metathesis catalysts for olefin metathesis to establish key design rules for improved catalytic performance. In 2018, she was awarded a Resnick Sustainability Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship and NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship to pursue research at Caltech with Professor Theodor Agapie, where she investigated rare open-shell molybdenum carbide and carbyne complexes for C–C coupling methodologies and biomimetic cluster synthesis for N2 fixation. Gwen started her independent research career at the University of Minnesota Department of Chemistry in 2021, where she directs a research group leveraging atomically precise nanochemistry to develop Earth-abundant catalysts for global energy sustainability. Her independent accomplishments have been recognized with major national honors, including the 2026 Beckman Young Investigator Award. For more information on Prof. Bailey's research: Bailey Research Group - Research Hosted by Prof. Patrick Holland. Sponsored by the Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman Memorial Fund.