The Park group will drive a research direction toward discovery of new reactivity to molecules in catalysis, which will smoothly be guided on the basis of synthetic and mechanistic organometallic chemistry. With this direction in mind, the Park group’s research goal is to develop homogeneous catalytic systems for selective transformations of naturally abundant, but inert molecules including simple (hetero)aromatics, alkanes, alkenes, and CO₂ to provide valuable synthetic feedstocks. More specifically, our first research target is to enable the metal-free or non-precious metal-catalyzed dehydrogenative C-H functionalizations of alkanes and (hetero)arenes with inexpensive coupling reagents such as organosilicon and boron. Our second research project is to synthesize finely-tuned and distinctive olefin polymers by applying new polymerization catalysts or unique olefin monomers. The Park group will also play on the interface between homo- and heterogeneous catalysis in close collaboration with experts of materials science, where we immobilize meaningful (non-)metallic species on well-defined nanomaterials and utilize them as a catalyst for selective transformations of a range of biomass (e.g. glycerol, sugar, lignin).