Project Grant 2246747

This three-year, $544,758 project grant from the National Science Foundation Division of Chemistry supports the development of new optical sensing methodologies to accelerate and broaden chiral compound analysis at Georgetown University. The university's Chemistry Department will introduce widely applicable small-molecule probes, novel molecular recognition strategies, artificial intelligence tools, and automated high-throughput experimentation technology. This will help overcome current limitations in comprehensively sensing compounds lacking common functional groups, substrates with multiple chirality centers, and multicomponent mixtures. New molecular probe designs aim to quickly capture currently elusive chiral targets and report molecular recognition through spontaneous chirality amplification and quantifiable chiroptical responses. Additionally, the project will develop organic reaction-based multi-modal optical sensing and chemometrics capable of orthogonal data fusion and spectral deconvolution to analyze complicated mixtures without prior separation. Finally, machine learning will be integrated with chiroptical high-throughput screening to enable original asymmetric catalysis discoveries. This award falls under the NSF's Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) to advance scientific knowledge and understanding in these fields.