Joseph M. Fox is Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, where he also is the Director of the NIH-funded Center of Biomedical Research Excellence on Molecular Discovery.
A native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Fox received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton University, where he conducted undergraduate research as a Pfizer fellow with Maitland Jones Jr. He completed graduate studies under Thomas Katz at Columbia University, where he developed a combined interest in materials science and the synthesis of challenging targets. He studied organometallic chemistry with Stephen Buchwald at MIT as an NIH postdoctoral fellow, where he worked on Pd-catalyzed ketone arylation and devised a synthesis of phosphine ligands that is now used commercially.
In 2001, Fox joined the faculty at UD, and he has built a multidisciplinary program that centers on the development of new types of chemical reactions. His group has developed new syntheses and transformations of chiral cyclopropenes and trans-cycloalkenes, and a new type of bioorthogonal reaction that allows for extremely rapid conjugation to biological macromolecules. Applications of this work include synthesis of naturally occurring and designed molecules with biological function, and in the use of design concepts in organic synthesis for applications in biology, radiochemistry, imaging, therapy and materials science.
contact info: 302-831-0191, jmfox@udel.edu
