Ulrich Hennecke#

AFFILIATION: Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Organisch-Chemisches Institut
FIELD OF SCHOLARSHIP: Organic Chemistry, Bioorganic Chemistry and Catalysis

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE:

Ulrich Hennecke was born and raised in Lower Saxony, Germany. He studied Chemistry at Philipps-University Marburg and received his Diploma degree in 2002. For his doctoral studies he joined Thomas Carell’s group to work on the photochemistry and photo lesions of DNA and obtained his PhD degree in 2007 from the LMU Munich. This was followed by a postdoctoral stay funded by a DAAD postdoctoral fellowship with Jonathan Clayden at the University of Manchester, where he worked on novel rearrangement reactions of organolithium compounds. He took up his current position as junior group leader in organic chemistry at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster in 2008. Since 2010 he is a project leader in the frame work of the Collaborative Research Center 858 – “Synergetic Effects in Chemistry”. In October 2014, he received the “venia legendi” in Organic Chemistry from the WWU Münster.

DETAILS OF RESEARCH:

The research interests of the Hennecke group range from synthetic organic chemistry and catalysis to nucleic acid chemistry and bioorganic chemistry in general. Currently, the main areas are the development of new asymmetric halogenations reactions, the chemistry and biochemistry of organohalogen compounds, the use of biomimetic iron complexes in oxidation catalysis and the application of (chemically modified) nucleic acid in asymmetric catalysis and nanotechnology.

In general, the basic starting point of all research in the Hennecke group is the use of synthetic organic chemistry to solve novel and highly interesting scientific questions either in chemistry or in related disciplines, which require the design and synthesis of “smart” molecules.

TWO KEY PUBLICATION REFERENCES:

“Enantioselective, Desymmetrizing Bromolactonization of Alkynes”
M. Wilking, C. Mück-Lichtenfeld, C. G. Daniliuc, U. Hennecke, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 8133-8136.

“Enantioselective Haloetherification by Asymmetric Opening of meso-Halonium Ions”
U. Hennecke, C. H. Müller, R. Fröhlich, Org. Lett. 2011, 13, 860-863.