Welcome to the Caputo Lab @ YorkU
Recent Highlights
Latest News
May 2025 - Congratulations to Lucas for publishing his work on creating a allenylidene phosphonium cation, which is isoelectronic to a [3]cumulene in Angewandte Chemie! This challenging project was a multi-year effort, enabled through a wonderful international collaboration with Prof. Fabian Dielmann at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. Congrats to everyone involved on that project. We also want to welcome Danton to the team for a summer undergraduate research project.
September 2024 - A big welcome to Madeleine Agostino, who is joining the group as a MSc student! Liza and Grazia are also sticking around for their undergraduate thesis projects.
June 2024 - We'd like to welcome Liza and Grazia who are joining us as undergraduate researchers this summer! Congrats to Taylor for recently publishing her findings on redox-active Lewis acids in Chemical Communications where the work was chosen as a Hot Article where she had the chance to design the Front Cover! A lot of presentations have happened over the last few months; Casey, Charley, and Taylor all presented their research at the recent Canadian Society for Chemistry conference in Winnipeg; Lucas presented his work at the 20th European Workshop on Phosphorus Chemistry in Würtzburg, Germany.
January 2024 - Just because I am terrible at updating the latest news in a timely manner doesn't mean the team hasn't been accomplishing some fantastic things! Three papers were published from the group this fall - congrats to Taylor for publishing her work on air- and moisture-stable Lewis acidic borinic acids in RSC Sustainability. We also published a culmination of so many team members work on understanding the mechanism of genipin dye formation in Dyes and Pigments. Big shout out to Charley, Avik, Nico, Fiona, Jesse, and Howard for getting this project across the finish line. Finally, thanks to Charley and Josh for putting our FLA method to work in a collaborative project with the Mehrkhodavandi group at the University of British Columbia, where we explored the Lewis acidity of cationic gallium and indium catalysts. This work was featured in ACS Catalysis.
Summer 2023 - A lot of exciting things have happened during the Winter and Spring this year! Both Dr. Nico Bonanno and Dr. Amandeep Brar have moved on to successful careers in industry, thank you both for your contributions to the team and we wish you all the best as you enter the next phase of your careers! Samantha Henneberry successfully defended her CHEM4000 thesis and gave a stellar presentation at SOUSCC51 at Trent University. We also welcomed Nicole Frias to the group as a summer NSERC USRA student.
Casey, Taylor, and Avik travelled to the CSC Conference in Vancouver to present their work, and Casey took home a poster prize for top presentation! Congrats!! Two papers came out of the group as well, congrats to Amy, Josh, Paul and Thomas for expanding the FLA method with their publication in the inaugural issue of Precision Chemistry. Furthermore, Lucas, Amandeep, Clive, and Jesse's work on allenic phosphonium borate zwitterions was published in ZAAC in a special issue for Dr. Doug Stephan's 70th birthday.
December 2022 - Some exciting news to share from the lab; first off Chris' Canada Research Chair was renewed for another 5-year term and he was granted tenure and promoted at York. Secondly, kudos to Lucas for being awarded a Mitacs Globalink Research Award to undertake a 6-month exchange at the University of Innsbruck in Austria! Finally, both Lucas and Taylor gave fantastic presentations at the 53rd Inorganic Discussion Weekend at Brock University and Taylor was awarded a presentation prize for her work. Congrats everyone!