Cathleen M. Crudden is a Canadian chemist. She is a Canada Research Chair in Metal Organic Chemistry at Queen's University at Kingston. In February 2021, she took up the role of Editor-in-chief at ACS Catalysis. ^[1]

Education

Crudden earned a Bachelors of Science at the University of Toronto in 1989, working with Mark Lautens, with whom she went on to complete her master's degree. ^[2] She moved to University of Ottawa for her PhD, working under the supervision of Howard Alper, which she completed in 1995. ^[3]

Research and career

Crudden was appointed a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council postdoctoral fellow at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign working with Scott E. Denmark in 1995. ^[2] She moved to University of New Brunswick in 1996 where she started her own research group. ^[4] In 2002, she was appointed a Queen's National Scholar and moved her research lab to Kingston, Ontario.

Crudden was the first to identify an enantiospecific Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling reaction of chiral boranes. ^[5] In 2014 she designed more stable nitrogen-based self-assembled monolayer treatments for metal surfaces. ^{[6] [7]} The N-heterocyclic carbene self-assembled monolayers can be used in a range of applications, including biosensors. ^[8] Her interests lie in hydroboration, organometallic chemistry, chiral materials and persistent carbenes. ^[9] In 2010 Crudden became head of a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council CREATE award in chiral materials, worth $1.6 million. ^[10] She became President of the Canadian Society of Chemistry. ^[11]

In 2015, as Principal Investigator of a group of ten collaborators, Crudden was awarded $8.8 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation for major infrastructure purchases. ^[12] She won the Queen's University Research Opportunities Fund, which she used to create inexpensive, sensitive biosensors. ^[13] Her group prepares carbon-based ligands for metal surfaces, which can be used as sensing systems based on surface plasmon resonance. ^[13] In 2016, she and Dr. Suning Wang held a trilateral Canada-Japan-Germany symposium at Queen's looking at Elements Functions for Transformative Catalysis and Materials. ^[14] Crudden is a joint Professor at the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules, based out of Nagoya University in Japan, where she runs a satellite lab. She is one of only four international collaborators at this Institute. ^{[15] [16]} She was recognised as having made the most distinguished contribution to the field of catalysis by the Chemical Institute of Canada in 2018, when they awarded her the Catalysis Award. ^[16] Crudden also often comments on developments in the field of organic chemistry in various media outlets. ^{[17] [18] [19] [20] [21]}

Awards

• 2022 Alfred Bader Award ^[22]
• 2020 Royal Society of Canada ^[23]
• 2019 Montreal Medal ^[24]
• 2019 American Chemical Society Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award ^[25]
• 2018 Queen's University prize for Excellence in Research ^[26]
• 2018 Chemical Institute of Canada Catalysis Award ^[16]
• 2018 Precious Metal Institute Carol Tyler Award ^[27]
• 2017 Canadian Society for Chemistry R.U. Lemieux Award ^{[28] [29]}

References