R. Graham Cooks
Purdue University West Lafayette, State Street (United States)
Papers
5
Total Citations
199
H-Index
5
About
R. Graham Cooks is a pioneering analytical chemist whose work has fundamentally transformed how organic reactions are discovered, optimized, and scaled. Best known for his innovations in mass spectrometry-based high-throughput experimentation, Cooks has developed sophisticated automated platforms that marry robotic liquid handling with desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (DESI-MS), enabling researchers to screen thousands of chemical reactions in a single day with remarkable speed and efficiency. His most impactful recent contributions center on accelerating drug discovery and synthetic chemistry workflows. By spotting reaction mixtures in array format on PTFE surfaces and coupling them to DESI-MS analysis — achieving read times as fast as 3.5 seconds per reaction — Cooks and his team have screened complex transformations including reductive aminations, nucleophilic aromatic substitutions, and aldol reactions of biorenewable feedstocks like triacetic acid lactone. These studies, accumulating citations ranging from 13 to 58, demonstrate both methodological ingenuity and broad applicability across pharmaceutical and sustainable chemistry contexts. Cooks' work bridges analytical chemistry, automation, and synthetic chemistry, offering the research community powerful tools to navigate vast chemical space rapidly. His platforms represent a new paradigm in reaction discovery, making him an indispensable figure in modern chemical sciences.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
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