René Peters

René Peters is Professor and Head of the Examination Committee for Chemistry programs at the University of Stuttgart's Institute of Organic Chemistry. His research focuses on developing innovative cooperative asymmetric catalysis methods inspired by enzymatic processes, aiming to solve long-standing synthetic challenges with high efficiency and stereocontrol.

Peters' group specializes in designing bifunctional and polyfunctional catalysts that activate both nucleophiles and electrophiles simultaneously through Lewis acid/base cooperativity. This biomimetic approach enables enantioselective transformations under mild conditions, including 1,4-additions, allylations, cycloadditions, and fluorinations. Recent work explores zwitterionic catalysts, palladacycle architectures, and gold nanoparticle systems for challenging bond formations.

His publications demonstrate progressive refinement of cooperative catalyst systems, with recent advances in stereoretentive allylations, enantiodivergent syntheses, and computational-experimental integration for reaction optimization. The group maintains strong emphasis on practical methodologies with potential industrial scalability.

Laboratory facilities support advanced synthesis, catalyst characterization (X-ray crystallography, NMR), and computational modeling. Peters leads collaborative projects on catalytic C-C bond formation and stereoselective fluorination. As Head of Examination Committee, he oversees chemistry curriculum development and assessment.

Key innovations include planar chiral palladacycles for efficient enantioselective arylations and novel gold nanocatalysts for Stille couplings. Future work expands cooperative catalysis to underrepresented transformations and develops machine learning approaches for catalyst optimization.