Claudio N. Verani Title Professor Division Inorganic Education B.S., Federal University of Santa Catarina (Brazil), 1994 M.Sc., Federal University of Santa Catarina (Brazil), 1996 Ph.D., Max-Planck Institute for Radiation Chemistry/Ruhr-University (Germany), 2000 Postdoctoral Fellow, Johns Hopkins University, 2000-2002. Office Chem 143 Phone (313)577-1076 E-Mail Group http://chem.wayne.edu/veranigroup

The focus of our research interests is the synthesis and study of mono- and multimetallic coordination complexes of transition metal ions that exhibit novel spectroscopic, magnetic, electrochemical, amphiphilic, or mesogenic properties. These complexes are used in the development of molecule-based materials. The large body of work resulting of ca. four decades of intensive research in the bioinorganic field has given substantial answers about how enzymes and other biorelevant molecules operate. The Verani Group is taking advantage of two typically bioinorganic approaches, namely biomodeling and biomimicking as tools to understand, design, and development molecule-based materials with potential relevance to the broadlydefined fields of metal-containing soft materials, supramolecular chemistry, molecular engineering, molecular electronics, and nanotechnology. Applications include stimulus-responsive liquid crystals, magnetic films and coatings, redox-driven switches, chemical sensors for molecular recognition, nanowires, and catalysts.

The major fields of current interest are as follows:

1. The understanding of coordination modes in metal complexes of asymmetric ligands: These systems act as archetypes for the development of metal-containing soft materials.

2. The development of surfactant and mesogenic metal-containing soft materials and the study of their properties and surface chemistry

3. The understanding and development of weakly coupled redox-driven molecular switches.

Other projects involve electrochromic metalloplastics and anti-tumor metallodrugs. These research topics encompass several aspects of modern coordination chemistry, including ligand design, inorganic synthesis, temperature and field dependent magnetic susceptibility, UV-visible, and EPR spectroscopy, electrochemistry, crystallography, Langmuir-Blodgett and self-assembly surface techniques, polarized microscopy, among others. In the long run, our objective is to seek, understand and systematize relationships between molecular topology and structure, spectroscopic, magnetic, electrochemical, amphiphilic and mesogenic properties of such species. The interface between experiment and theory is stressed by means of molecular orbital calculations. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of the research several collaborations are established.

"Influence of Ligand Rigidity and Ring Substitution on the Structural and Electronic Behavior of Trivalent Iron and Gallium Complexes with Asymmetric Tridentate Ligands" Imbert et al Inorg. Chem. 2005, 44, 7414-7422

"Archetypical Modeling and Amphiphilic Behavior of Cobalt(II)-containing Soft-Materials with Asymmetric Tridentate Ligands" Shakya et al Inorg. Chem. 2007, 46, 9808

"Interfacial Behavior and Film Patterning of Redox-Active Cationic Copper(II)-Containing Surfactants" Driscoll et al Chem. - Eur. J. 2008, 14, 9665

"Comparative Activities of Nickel(II) and Zinc(II) Complexes of Asymmetric [NN'O] Ligands as 26S Proteasome Inhibitors" Frezza et al Inorg. Chem. 2009, 48, 5928

"Investigation of the Electronic, Photosubstitution, Redox, and Surface Properties of New Ruthenium(II)-containing Amphiphiles" Lesh et al Inorg. Chem. 2011, 50, 969

"Probing the Inhibition Mechanisms of the 26S Proteasome by Metal Complexes in Tumorous Cells" (Invited review) Verani J. Inorg. Biochem. 2012, 106, 59

"Bioinspired Five-coordinate Iron(III) Complexes for Stabilization of Phenoxyl Radicals" Allard et al Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012, 51, 3178