Wednesday, 16 August 11:00am – 12:00pm

This seminar will be delivered in Chemistry Lecture Theatre 4 and Online (Zoom) Please email chemistry.researchsupport@sydney.edu.au for zoom link and password.

Speaker: Prof. Ram Krishnamurthy, The Scripps Research Institute

Host: Dr Constance Bailey

Title: Employing Organic Chemistry to Gain an Understanding of Origins of Life – Insights and Applications

Abstract: Our laboratory has a long standing interest in understanding the chemical origins of life, which we view as primarily an organic chemistry undertaking constrained by early Earth prebiotic conditions. The prebiotic constraints have inspired us to discovered ‘unconventional’ chemistries that have led to alternative insights and possibilities, with respect to chemical origins of -and chemical evolution leading to- life. In this process, these endeavors have also given rise to opportunities for applications in synthetic organic chemistry. The presentation will focus on the work from our laboratories exemplifying how organic chemistry in a prebiotic chemistry context can be a useful tool – for understanding the past and for implementation in the future.

Bio: Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy received his B.Sc. in chemistry from Vivekananda College (University of Madras), M.Sc. in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Bombay and  Ph.D. from The Ohio State University (OSU). Influenced by an enchanting lecture by Albert Eschenmoser, he pursued postdoctoral work at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland with Eschenmoser and later with Gustaf Arrhenius at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, USA. He then rejoined Eschenmoser at the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, resulting in a 13-year collaborative partnership. He is currently a professor of chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute. He is a scientific collaborator with the Simons Collaboration on the Origins of Life (SCOL), the Center for Chemical Evolution (CCE) at the Georgia Institute of Technology and is a co-lead of the Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environments (PCE3) Consortium, one of the five Research Coordination Networks within the NASA Astrobiology Program.