Dr. Boyd is an Assistant Professor in the Cleveland State University Department of Chemistry, and an inorganic chemist whose research focuses on the coordination chemistry of organic nitroso compounds such as nitrosoalkanes, N,N'-azodioxides, and N-nitrosamines. Research in the Boyd group focuses on a mixture of fundamental coordination chemistry and applications to catalysis, environmental remediation, and medicine.

"The main research projects in the Boyd group are as follows: 1) N,N'-azodioxides, dimers formed from nitrosoalkanes, have the potential to behave as chelating, redox-active ligands for transition metal complexes, but their coordination chemistry has so far not been widely explored. This project will focus on the synthesis and characterization of novel transition metal azodioxide complexes, and the exploration of their reactivity, both as possible sources of electroisomerism (a.k.a. valence tautomerism) and catalysis mediated by ligand-based changes in oxidation state. 2) Transition-metal alkyl nitrosyl complexes have been shown to form nitrosoalkane complexes via the migratory insertion reaction, similar to the formation of metal acyl complexes from metal alkyl carbonyl complexes. Acyl complex formation is known to be accelerated in some cases by single-electron oxidation or reduction. This project will explore the possibility of redox-accelererated alpha-elimination of metal nitrosoalkane complexes to yield alkyl nitrosyl complexes with labile NO ligands. Efforts will be made to develop nontoxic, air- and water-stable nitrosoalkane complexes that can then serve as redox-mediated NO release agents for biological systems. 3) N-nitrosamines are a well-known class of carcinogenic poisons, found both in meats cured with nitrite salts and as pollutants arising from rubber manufacture and the chlorination of waste water. This project will explore the coordination chemistry of nitrosamines, with the goal of developing a metal-mediated method for their degradation to less toxic substances. Metal complexes will be sought to mediate a series of reactions to accomplish azidolysis of nitrosamines to yield less toxic dialkylammonium ions and elemental nitrogen. Conditions will then be developed to allow these reactions to be run together in a single reaction vessel, for a one-pot, metal-catalyzed detoxification reaction. "