Research

Curiosity and creativity are the driving forces of science. The unlimited space of chemical structures is an endless playground to further challenge our imagination and to advance science.

Research in the Gessner group aims at the design of molecules, reagents and catalysts with specifically designed properties and reactivities tailored for applications in synthesis and catalysis. While many of our projects mainly focus on fundamental, curiosity-driven research questions and the isolation of compounds with unusual bonding situations, the ultimate goal is their development towards applications, such as the preparation of efficient and sustainable catalysts or the generation of new reagents such as for the development of synthetic pathways using abundant small molecules such as CO, H2 or CO2 as building blocks. Current research projects focus on the following four directions:

Research Areas

Carbanionic and 
ylidic reagents 

Main group 
chemistry

Phosphine ligands and catalysis

Computations and Machine Learning