The Research Group of Christine Thomas

Christine Thomas received her B.S. in chemistry from Lafayette College (Easton, PA) in 2001, where she worked on the synthesis and electrochemistry of inorganic compounds with Professor Chip Nataro. She received her Ph.D. inorganic chemistry in 2006 at the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, CA) under the direction of Professor Jonas C. Peters. Her graduate research focused on a wide range of synthetic projects related to inorganic and organometallic chemistry, including the examination of C-H activation by platinum complexes, the design of new ligands, the examination of the reactivity of coordinatively unsaturated tris(phosphino)borate iron complexes towards small molecule activation, and the synthesis of the first well-defined and structurally characterized Fe(IV) imido complex. Christine went on to pursue postdoctoral work under the direction of Professors Marcetta Y. Darensbourg and Michael B. Hall at Texas A&M University (College Station, TX), where her postdoctoral research concentrated on the experimental and theoretical investigation of small molecule models of the dinuclear active site of [FeFe]-Hydrogenase, an enzyme that catalyzes the reversible production of hydrogen from protons. In 2008, Christine began her career as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Brandeis University (Waltham, MA). Christine was selected for DOE's Early Career Research Program in 2011, was named a 2011 Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, and received an NSF CAREER award in 2012. She was selected as a 2012 Organometallics Fellow, was named a 2013/2014 Chemical Communications Emerging Investigator, was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2014, and was selected for the 2015 Dalton Transactions Lectureship. Christine's dedication to teaching has also been recognized by the 2012 Michael L. Walzer '56 Award for Excellence in Teaching at Brandeis University. At Brandeis University, Christine was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in May 2013 and to full Professor in July 2016. She has been on the Editorial Advisory Board of Chemical Communications since 2012, is on the Board of Directors of Inorganic Syntheses, and has been serving as an Associate Editor of Dalton Transactions since 2014. Christine joined the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The Ohio State University in January 2018.