Dr Wade F. Petersen

Wade is an organic chemist born in Cape Town, South Africa. He obtained his BSc. (Hons) from the University of Cape Town and subsequently completed his PhD in Organic Chemistry from the same institution under the supervision of Professor Roger Hunter in 2015. His PhD research work focused on the development of stereoselective methodologies applied to natural product synthesis.

Following this, Wade carried out a postdoctoral research fellowship at H3D, the Drug Discovery and Development Centre at the University of Cape Town, under the mentorship of Professor Kelly Chibale before spending two years as an independent postdoctoral fellow at the University of York, UK, under the mentorship of Professor Richard Taylor. During these two years his research focused on the synthesis of various biologically important nitrogen-containing heterocycles.

In 2018, Wade returned to the University of Cape Town to start his independent academic career. His research interests lie in the development of synthetic methodologies for the construction of small molecules and natural products relevant to medicinal chemistry and chemical biology. A core theme of his research is asymmetric catalysis enable by various single electron transfer and C-H activation processes.