Dr. Daniel Mindiola (born in 1974), a Venezuelan chemist, is the Brush Family Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania.
As an undergraduate, he conducted research with Kim Renee Dunbar, studying the binding modes of purine bases to anti-tumor drugs containing Re, Rh, and Pt.
[4][5] He then worked as a NIH and FORD Postdoctoral Research Fellow for the late Gregory L. Hillhouse at the University of Chicago on metal mediated N2O reductions and group 10 complexes with multiple metal-ligand bonds.
Much of Mindiola's work with transition metal complexes has been applied to the intermolecular activation of inert C-H bonds to convert hydrocarbons into industrial products in a safe and cost-effective manner.
In an account, he describes the synthesis of highly reactive titanium and vanadium species that were previously considered to be too unstable.