[2] After receiving his bachelor's degree from Colorado in 1994, he entered Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he later earned his Ph.D. under Professor Stephen L. Buchwald in 1999 .

Since then his research has focused on numerous topics in chemistry, which altogether direct towards the development of new metal-catalyzed reactions for the synthesis of interesting, biologically active compounds.

[6][7][8] Common applications include the synthesis of pyrrolidines, and three-, five-, six- and seven-membered heterocycles such as pyrazolidines, aziridines, morpholines.

[10] The reaction is initiated by oxidative addition of the aryl bromide to Pd(0) (1), proceeded by the formation of the key intermediate palladium(aryl)amido complex 2, which then undergoes intramolecular syn-migratory insertion of the alkene into the Pd-N bond to yield 3 to generate the product via reductive elimination (Scheme 2).

The ligand allows the reactions to take place at room-temperature, and performs well for a wide range of different substrate combinations at 80-110 °C, which includes chloropyridines and functionalized aryl halides and triflates.

The arene from the aryl halide is forced to orient perpendicularly to the N-Pd bond, which should stereoelectronically favor reductive elimination.