Research in this area focuses on the design of functional molecules, the determination and understanding of chemical structures, and the application of kinetic approaches to the study of organic and organometallic processes.  Particular interests are the control of conformational properties of acyclic molecules, the recognition of carbohydrates by synthetic receptors, the design of anion transporters, crystal engineering and ab initio structural determination by NMR. Mechanistic work concentrates primarily on industrially relevant and scalable reactions, with special emphasis on palladium catalysis.