Professor Wipf’s research focuses on the total synthesis of natural products, organometallic and heterocyclic chemistry, combinatorial, medicinal and computational chemistry. At the center of his research program is the study of chemical reactivity and the use of synthesis to augment the chemical toolbox and develop new therapeutic strategies. A major emphasis involves the efficient preparation of polyfunctionalized nitrogen-containing building blocks for biological screening and natural product target-directed syntheses. The discovery of fundamentally new reaction pathways is stimulated by exploratory studies of transition metal complexes, in particular zirconocenes.