Matthew S. Sigman PhD

Matthew S. Sigman, Ph.D., is the Peter J. Christine S. Stang Presidential Endowed Chair of Chemistry at the University of Utah. He earned his B.S. at Sonoma State University, 1992, his Ph.D. at Washington State University, 1996, and was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow, at Harvard University, 1997-1999. Dr. Sigman's research program is focused on the discovery of new practical catalytic reactions with broad substrate scope, excellent chemoselectivity, and high stereoselectivity to access novel medicinally relevant architectures.

He believes the best strategy for developing new classes of catalysts and reactions applicable to organic synthesis is using mechanistic insights to guide the discovery process. This allows him to design new reaction motifs or catalysts in which unique bond constructions can be implemented furthering new approaches to molecule construction. An underlying theme to these methodologies is to convert relatively simple substrates into much more complex compounds allowing for access to known and novel pharmacophores in a modular manner. This provides the ability to readily synthesize analogs enabling the understanding of important structural features responsible for a phenotypic response in a given biological assay. Dr. Sigman is currently engaged in several collaborative projects to evaluate his group's compound collections for various cancer types at the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah and is engaged in follow-up investigations to identify improved compounds as well as understanding the mechanism of action.