• NIH Postdoctoral Fellow, California Institute of Technology, CA, 2012-2015
• PhD, University of California-Irvine, CA, 2012
• BS, Colorado State University, CO, 2007

• UB’s Exceptional Scholar – Young Investigator Award, 2020
• Arthur E. Martell Early Career Researcher Prize, 2020
• NSF CAREER Award, 2019
• NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (F32GM106726)

• Coordination chemistry, reactivity, and mechanisms of transition metal catalysts

Our group studies the coordination chemistry and reactivity of Mn, Fe, and Ru complexes with the goal of designing sustainable catalysts for chemically reversible transformations involving molecular hydrogen and other small molecules (e.g., O₂, CO₂, CO, N₂, etc.). Another significant effort in my group is ligand design and synthesis of new coordination complexes where our main goal is to bring out the unique properties of various transition metals to enable new chemistry. These studies have been fruitful in uncovering unprecedented coordination modes, discoveries of unexpected catalyst formulations, and developing synthetic applications that use manganese catalysts.

Students who join the Lacy Lab will participate in activities that include the following:

• organic synthesis (ligand & substrate synthesis, organic product analysis)
• inorganic synthesis (transition metal complex synthesis)
• organometallic chemistry (metal carbonyls, metallocenes, photochemistry)
• catalysis (substrate screening, reaction optimization)
• characterization techniques (electrochemistry, EPR, NMR, FTIR, UV-vis, XRD, MS)
• mechanistic studies (kinetics, substrate monitoring, hypothesis-driven validation)

• Gunasekera, P. S.; MacMillan, S. N.; Lacy,* D. C. Synthesis and Coordination of a tert-Butyl Functionalized Facially Coordinating 2-Histidine 1-Carboxylate Model Ligand. J. Coord. Chem. 2021, 74, 315-320.
• Gunasekera, P. S.; Abhyankar, P. C.; MacMillan, S. N.; Lacy,* D. C. A Facially Coordinating Tris-Benzimidazole Ligand for Nonheme Iron Enzyme Models. Eur. J. Inorg. Chem. 2021, 2021, 654-657.
• Fanara, P. M.; MacMillan, S. N.;  Lacy,* D. C. Planar-Locked Ru-PNN Catalysts in 1-Phenylethanol Dehydrogenation.  Organometallics, 2020, 39, 3628-3644.
• Kadassery, K. J.; Crawley, M. R.; MacMillan, S. N.; Lacy,* D. C. A Hemilabile Manganese(I)-Phenol Complex and its Coordination Induced O–H Bond Weakening. Dalton Trans. 2020, 49, 16217-16255.
• Vigneswaran, V.; MacMillan, S. N.; Lacy,* D. C. Beta-Amino Phosphine Mn Catalysts for 1,4-Transfer Hydrogenation of Chalcones and Allylic Alcohol Isomerization. Organometallics 2019, 38, 4387-4391.
• Kadassery, K. J.; MacMillan, S. N.; Lacy,* D. C. Resurgence of organomanganese(I) chemistry. Bidentate phosphine-phenolate Mn(I) complexes. Inorg. Chem. 2019, 58, 10527-10535.
• Lacy,* D. C. Applications of the Marcus cross relation to inner sphere reduction of O₂: implications in small-molecule activation. Inorg. Chem. Front. 2019, 6, 2396-2403.
• Kadassery, K. J.; Lacy,* D. C. Pentacarbonylmethylmanganese(I) as a synthon for Mn(I) pincer catalysts. Dalton Trans. 2019, 48, 4467-4470.
• Kadassery,^§ K. J.; Sethi,^§ K.; Fanara, P. M.; Lacy,* D. C. CO-photolysis-induced H-atom transfer from Mn(I)O–H bonds. Inorg. Chem. 2019, 58, 4679-4685.
  ^§ = equally contributing
• Crawley, M.; Kadassery, K. J.; Oldacre, A. N.; Freidman, A. E.; Lacy,* D. C.; Cook,* T. R. Rhenium(I) phosphazane complexes for electrocatalytic CO₂ reduction. Organometallics 2019, 38, 1664-1676.
• Cannella, A. F.; Surendhran,^‡ R.; MacMillan, S. N.; Gupta, R.; Lacy,* D. C. Electronically varied manganese tris-arylacetamide tripodal complexes. J. Coord. Chem. 2019, 72, 1287-1297.
• Guan, Y.-S.; Zhong, G.; Hu, Y.; Cannella, A. F.; Li, C.; Lee, N.; Jia,* Q.; Lacy,* D. C.; Ren,* S. Magnetoelectric radical hydrocarbons. Adv. Mater. 2018, 31, 1806263.
• Andrews, J. L.; Cho, J.; Wangoh, L.; Suwandaratne, N.; Sheng, A.; Chauhan S.; Nieto, K.; Mohr, A.; Kadassery, K. J.; Popeil, M. R.; Thakur, P. K.; Sfeir, M.; Lacy, D. C.; Lee, T.-L.; Zhang, P.; Watson,* D. F.; Piper,* L. F. J.; Banerjee,* S.; Hole extraction by design in photocatalytic architectures interfacing CdSe quantum dots with topochemically-stabilized tin vanadium oxide. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2018, 140, 17163-17174.
• Kadassery, K. J., MacMillan, S. N.; Lacy,* D. C. Bis-phosphine phenol and phenolate Mn(I) complexes: manganese(I) catalyzed Tishchenko reaction. Dalton Trans. 2018, 47, 12652-12655.
• Surendhran, R.;^‡ D’Arpino, A. A.; ^‡ Bao, Y. S.;^‡ Cannella, A. F.; MacMillan, S. N.; Lacy,* D. C. Deciphering the Mechanism of O₂ Reduction with Electronically Tunable Non-Heme Iron Enzyme Model Complexes. Chem. Sci. 2018, 9, 5773-5780. 
  ^‡ = undergraduate authors
• Cannella, A. F.; Dey, S. K.; MacMillan, S. M.; Lacy,* D. C. Structural Diversity in Pyridine and Polypyridine Adducts of Ring Slipped Manganocene: Correlating Ligand Steric Bulk with a Quantified Non-Ideal Hapticity Parameter. Dalton Trans. 2018, 47, 5171-5180.
• Kadassery, K. J.; Dey, S. K.; Cannella, A. F.; Surendhran,^‡ R.; Lacy,* D. C. Photochemical Water-Splitting with Organomanganese Complexes. Inorg. Chem. 2017, 56, 9954-9965.
• Kadassery, K. J.; Dey, S. K.; Friedman, A. E.; Lacy,* D. C. Exploring the Role of Carbonate in the Formation of an Organomanganese Tetramer. Inorg. Chem. 2017, 56, 8748-8751.