WA Branch Chemaraderie – May 21st 2026
From the Back Row to the Front Row:
Iron in Homogeneous Catalysis
Dr Marcus Korb
School of Molecular Sciences, UWA
marcus.korb@uwa.edu.au
Abstract
Iron has long played a supporting role in homogeneous catalysis, whether as a structural motif in ligand design or as a redox-active backbone in organometallic frameworks. In this talk, I will outline how my work has evolved from the development of planar-chiral iron-based backbone architectures for asymmetric Pd-catalysed transformations to the use of iron as the catalytically active metal in homogeneous catalysis. I will highlight how organometallic scaffolds provided an entry point to questions of chirality, and ligand design, and how these studies ultimately motivated a broader shift towards ligand designs for iron-mediated bond activations and catalysis. Recent results show that such earth-abundant iron systems can promote challenging transformations, culminating in the successful development of Kumada-type C–C cross-coupling reactions with chloro-functionalised substrates.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Marcus Korb is a research fellow at the University of Western Australia. He completed his undergraduate degree at Technical University Chemnitz under Prof. H. Lang, followed by a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry which he completed in 2017. After a short post-doctoral stay at TUC and the excellence cluster MERGE in Chemnitz, he moved to UWA in 2019 with a Fellowship from the Forrest Research Foundation. He established his independent group in 2023 through a DECRA, awarded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and a CB and GF Robertson Fellowship and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2025. In 2024, he received the EMCR award from the School of Molecular Sciences (UWA), was appointed to the EMCR Executive of the Australian Academy of Sciences and the National Committee for Chemistry in 2026.
Evening details
Date: Thursday 21st May
Time: 5.30pm Refreshments and registration
6.00pm Presentation
To be followed by more networking, and Pizza
Venue: ChemCentre, Exhibition Space, Building 500, Curtin University.
Cost: Free (Please register for catering purposes)
