R. Tom Baker

Hailing from Tsawwassen, BC, Baker got his BSc from UBC and PhD from UCLA with M. Fred Hawthorne. After a Postdoc with Phil Skell at Penn State, he worked on homogeneous catalysis research for 15 years at DuPont CR&D in Delaware and 12 years at Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico. In 2008 he joined uOttawa as Full Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Catalysis Science for Energy Applications.

Baker’s focus is on applications of catalysis science to development of sustainable chemical processes. At uOttawa, collaborative projects included amine-boranes for chemical hydrogen storage, metal-catalyzed lignocellulose disassembly, and surface-supported molecular complexes for tandem catalysis. Current work includes base metal molecular catalysts using N and S donors for ligand -assisted catalysis and fundamental transition metal organofluorine chemistry aimed at at ‘greener’ methods for preparing technologically valuable fluorochemicals.