In recent years, the pharmaceutical industry has been interested in biocatalysis (enzymes) for the production of drugs and drug intermediates due to the high selectivity of enzymes. However, many of these enzymes require expensive cofactors. Electrochemistry provides an opportunity to do cofactor regeneration to decrease the cost and the sustainability of biocatalysis for synthesis.

This webinar will introduce bioelectrocatalysis and discuss its current and future applications in electrosynthesis.

Shelley Minteer is a USTAR Professor in the departments of chemistry, and materials science and engineering at the University of Utah. She received her PhD in analytical chemistry at the University of Iowa in 2000 under the direction of Professor Johna Leddy. After receiving her PhD, she spent 11 years as a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at Saint Louis University before moving to the University of Utah in 2011. She is also an Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Chemical Society. She has published more than 350 publications and more than 450 presentations at national and international conferences and universities. She has won several awards, including the Luigi Galvani Prize of the Bioelectrochemical Society, the Missouri Inventor of the Year, International Society of Electrochemistry Tajima Prize, Fellow of The Electrochemical Society, and the Society of Electroanalytical Chemists’ Young Investigator Award. Her research interests focus on electrocatalysis and bioanalytical electrochemistry. She has expertise in biosensors, biofuel cells, and bioelectronics.