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Education
R. Tom Baker was born in Tsawwassen, British Columbia, Canada. He attended University of British Columbia as an undergraduate student and earned his B.Sc in Chemistry in 1975. He then conducted his graduate research work under the supervision of M. Frederick Hawthorne at University of California, Los Angeles. After he earned his Ph.D in Inorganic Chemistry in 1980, he spent one year working as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Philip S. Skell at Pennsylvania State University from 1980 to 1981.

Career
From 1981 to 1996, R. Tom Baker worked as a research chemist at DuPont Central Research and Department (CR&D) where he became a homogeneous catalysis scouting group leader in 1993. In 1996 he joined Inorganic Isotopes and Actinides Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to work as a research chemist. In 2008 he joined faculty at University of Ottawa. He was a director of Centre for Catalysis Research and Innovation from 2008 to 2015. He currently is a Canada Research Chair in Catalysis Science for Energy Applications and is still affiliated with LANL. In 2009, he was awarded research fellowship from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Research
Baker has made substantial contributions to the development and application of inorganic transition metal-based catalysis in different areas of chemical industry and academia. During the years at DuPont, his research was mainly focused on developing and applying inorganic homogeneous catalysis to industrial products such as fluorocarbons and nylon, as well as developing transition metal boryl compounds such as boryliridium complexes to facilitate transition-metal-catalyzed hydroboration of alkenes.1,2  After he joined Los Alamos National Laboratory, he turned his research interest into developing sustainable synthetic chemistry with multiphasic, multifunctional catalysis at low temperatures to minimize energy consumption and chemical wastes,3,4 as well as B-N containing compounds for chemical hydrogen storage5,6. A majority of his recent research has been focused on sustainability and green chemistry, such as developing efficient transition metal-based catalysts for hydrogen storage compounds in order to utilize hydrogen as an alternate safe and clean energy resource.5-8 This research includes a broad work of B-N containing compounds such as ammonia-borane (H3NBH3) as an ideal hydrogen fuel carrier,6 as well as developing inexpensive earth-abundant transition metal-based catalysts such as iron complex to facilitate dehydrogenation process of ammonia-borane with less expenses.7 Furthermore, his study provides insight into the second hydrogen release step of dehydrogenation by isolation and characterization of reaction intermediate.8 Baker also works on utilizing copper and vanadium homogeneous catalysts to facilitate aerobic oxidation of lignocellulos to obtain small monomeric organic molecules which can produce more valuable chemicals and renewable biofuels.9-11 This research includes investigating reactivity and oxidation selectivity of different metal catalysts towards a variety of lignin models,9-11 a study of C-O bond and C-C bond cleavage pathways towards simple and complex lignin models,9 and the function of base in the aerobic oxidation process.9,10 Baker’s recent research also includes the development of tandem catalytic system to convert ethanol to n-butanol with high selectivity.12 N-butanol, owing to its high energy density and immiscibility with water, is known as a better renewable biofuel than ethanol. Additionally, Baker’s group has made substantial contributions to organofluorine chemistry, especially on metal-based fluorocarbenes, including synthesis of a variety of fluorocarbene transition metal complexes by directly introducing difluorocarbene ligands to transition metal centres such as cobalt and nickel,13,14 as well as investigating [2+2] cycloaddition reactions between metal fluorocarbenes and tetrafuoroethylene (TFE), which sheds light on a greener route to produce fluorocarbons from waste polytetrafluoroethylene materials.15

Figure 1. Lignocellulose disassembly to break down common lignin linkage into monomeric molecules by transition metal-based catalysts.

Figure 2. Tandem catalytic system to convert ethanol to n-butanol with high selectivity.

References:
1. Boryliridium and Boraethyliridium Complexes fac-[IrH2(PMe3)3(BRR')] and fac-[IrH(PMe3)3(η2 -CH2BHRR')], Baker, R. T.; Ovenall, D. W.; Calabrese, J. C.; Westcott, S. A.; Taylor, N. J.; Williams, I. D.; Marder, T. B. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1990, 112, 9399-9400.

2. Reactions of Catecholborane with Wilkinson's Catalyst: Implications for Transition Metal-Catalyzed Hydroboration of Alkenes, Burgess, K.; van der Donk, W. A.; Westcott, S. A.; Marder, T. B.; Baker, R. T.; Calabrese, J. C. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1992, 114, 9350-9359.

3. Homogeneous Catalysis Enhanced: Toward Greener Chemistry, Baker, R. T.; Tumas, W. Science 1999, 284, 1477–1479.

4. Phase-separable Catalysis using Room Temperature Ionic Liquids and Supercritical Carbon Dioxide, Liu, F.; Abrams, M. B.; Baker, R. T.; Tumas, W. Chem. Commun. 2001, 433-434.

5. Dehydrogenation of Amine-Boranes for Chemical Hydrogen Storage, Prep. Symp. ACS Fuel Div. 2006, 51, 644-645.

6. Ammonia-Borane, the Hydrogen Storage Source Par Excellence, Stephens, F. H.; Pons, V.; Baker, R. T. Dalton Trans., 2007, 2613-2626.

7. Iron Complex-Catalyzed Ammonia-Borane Dehydrogenation. A Potential Route toward B-N-Containing Polymer Motifs Using Earth-Abundant Metal Catalysts, Baker, R. T.; Gordon, J. C.; Hamilton, C. W.; Henson, N. J.; Lin, P.-H.; Maguire, S.; Murugesu, M.; Scott, Brian L.; Smythe, Nathan C. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2012, 134, 5598−5609.

8. Probing the Second Dehydrogenation Step in Ammonia-borane Dehydrocoupling: Characterization and Reactivity of the Key Intermediate, B-(cyclotriborazanyl)amine-borane, Kalviri, H. A.; Gartner, F.; Ye, G; Korobkov, I.; Baker, R. T. Chem. Sci. 2015, 6, 618-624.

9. Knocking on Wood: Base Metal Complexes as Catalysts for Selective Oxidation of Lignin Models and Extracts, Hanson, S. K.; Baker, R. T. Acc. Chem. Res. 2015, 48, 2037-2048.

10. Towards Lignin Valorisation: Comparing Homogeneous Catalysts for the Aerobic Oxidation and Depolymerisation of Organosolv Lignin, Diaz-Urrutia, C.; Chen, W.-C.; Crites, C.-O.; Daccache, J.; Korobkov, I.; Baker, R. T. RSC Adv. 2015, 5, 70502-70511.

11. Aerobic Oxidation of Phenoxyethanol Lignin Models Using Vanadium and Copper Catalysts, Díaz-Urrutia, C.; Sedai, B.; Leckett, K. C. Baker, R. T.; Hanson, S. K. ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng. 2016, 4, 6244–6251.

12. Highly Selective Formation of n-Butanol from Ethanol through the Guerbet Process: A Tandem Catalytic Approach, Chakraborty, S.; Piszel, P. E.; Hayes, C. E.; Baker, R. T.; Jones, W. D. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2015, 137, 14264-14267.

13. Tetracarbonyl(trifluoromethyl)cobalt(I) [Co(CO)4(CF3)] as a Precursor to New Cobalt Trifluoromethyl and Difluorocarbene Complexes, Harrison, D. J.; Daniels, A. L.; Korobkov, I.; Baker, R. T. Organometallics, 2015, 34, 4598-4604.

14. Stepwise Addition of Difluorocarbene to a Transition Metal Centre, Lee, G. M.; Harrison, D. J.; Korobkov, I.; Baker, R. T. Chem. Commun. 2014, 50, 1128-1130.

15. Cobalt Fluorocarbenes: Cycloaddition Reactions with Tetrafluoroethylene and Reactivity of the Perfluorometallacyclic Products, Harrison, D. J.; Lee, G. M.; Leclerc, M. C.; Korobkov, I.; Baker, R. T. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 18296-18299.