Team > Prof. Dr. Moshe Kol

Tel Aviv University

Prof. Kol completed his Ph.D. studies in Organic Chemistry under the guidance of Prof. Shlomo Rozen at Tel Aviv University in 1991, and his post-doctoral studies in Inorganic Chemistry under the guidance of Prof. Richard R. Schrock (the Nobel laureate in Chemistry in 2005) at MIT. He joined the School of Chemistry of Tel Aviv University as a senior faculty member in 1993 and since 2011 he is a Full Professor. Since 2016 he is the holder of the Bruno Landesberg Chair for Green Chemistry.                                    The main research topic in the Kol group is the design of organometallic catalysts for polymerization reactions, and his group is a world leader in stereoselective polymerization. In recent years, most of the research efforts in the Kol group are directed towards the synthesis of environmentally-friendly polymers that are derived from annually-renewable resources, such as corn or even municipal waste, and decompose post-consumption to non-hazardous products. In particular, recent developments in the group have led to catalysts of unprecedented activity and stereoselectivity under industrial conditions that may reduce the cost of production of environmentally-benign plastics thus enabling their use at the expense of less benign plastics.

Selected recent publications:                                                                                             1. R. Hador, M. Shuster, S. Lipstman, and M. Kol Fast-Tracking the L-Lactide Polymerization Activity of Group 4 Metal Complexes of Amine Tris(phenolate) Ligands ACS Catal. 12, 4872−4879 (2022).                                                                                     2. R. Hador, M. Shuster, V. Venditto, and M. Kol Stereogradient Poly(Lactic Acid) from meso-Lactide / L-lactide Mixtures Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2022, 61, e202207652; Angew. Chem. 2022, 134, e202207652 (VIP paper).

Tel Aviv University

Prof. Dr. Moshe Kol