Thomas J. Colacot

Thomas J. Colacot

 

 Thomas J. Colacot

Dr Thomas John Colacot was born in Central Kerala, India. After finishing his PhD in Chemistry at IIT Madras with Prof. M.N.S. Rao in 1989, he moved to the University of Alabama at Birmingham for a combined teaching and post-doctoral research position in the area of Group III-V Chemistry with Prof. L. K. Krannich. In 1992, he became an Asst. Professor at Florida A & M University, while collaborating with Prof. Will Rees at Florida State University. Due to family commitments, he moved to Southern Methodist University, Dallas in 1993 to work with Professor N.S. Hosmane on an Advanced Technology Program/AMCO project. Although Prof. Hosmane and Dr Colacot did not have any previous experience in catalysis, Dr Hosmane gave him complete freedom to explore catalysis research using mixed carborane–cyclopentadiene complexes of early transition metals for the manufacture of plastics (olefin polymerization).

In 1995, Dr Colacot began his career at Johnson Matthey, USA, directing the homogeneous catalysis research group. With an extensive background in ligand technology obtained during his time at IIT Madras, Chennai and UAB, in conjunction with his studies in catalysis from SMU, Dr Colacot focused his research in the area of precious metal catalysis and has become an industrial expert in cross coupling.

Through his research, Dr Colacot and his group have generated highly active, practical palladium based cross coupling catalysts for applications in pharmaceutical, fine chemical and academic labs. Currently, Dr Colacot is the R&D Global Manager of Homogeneous Catalysis. He has given numerous invited and plenary lectures in many international conferences and acts as an external PhD thesis examiner to IITs and universities and a visiting professor in many universities. He has contributed several publications, patents, book chapters and reviews. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and has obtained a MBA from Pennsylvania State University. He received Royal Society’s 2012 RSC Applied Catalysis Award and Medal for his “exceptional contributions” to Homogeneous Catalysis, particularly for making this technology accessible to industry and academia, and recently he has received the 2015 American Chemical Society Award for Industrial Chemistry in “recognition of his contributions and leadership in the development and commercialization of ligands and precatalysts for metal-catalyzed organic synthesis, particularly cross-couplings, for industrial and academic use and applications”. Dr Colacot has coauthored Chapters 1–3 of the book.

Biographies, in New Trends in Cross-Coupling: Theory and Applications, 2014, pp. P021-P036 DOI: 10.1039/9781782620259-FP021
eISBN:978-1-78262-025-9