Prof. Ofer Reany’s research group consists of post-doctoral researchers who come from abroad for 2–4 years to acquire experience in independent research and train them for positions in academia or industry. The group is hosted in the research laboratories of Prof. Ehud Keinan of the Faculty of Chemistry in the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and of Prof. Gabriel Lemcoff of the Department of Chemistry of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in which various research collaborations take place.
In the Technion, the research group is focused on designing supramolecular systems based on the Bambusuril scaffold and studying their binding properties in the presence of biologically and environmentally important anions. In this context, the conversion of bambusuril to sulfur- or nitrogen-containing bambusurils afforded semithio- and semiaza-Bambusurils with a significant change in the anion binding properties. Furthermore, the heteroatom replacement approach also affected the activity of hetero-Bambusurils from simple anion receptors to anion carriers. Hence, semithio-Bambusurils behave as anion transporters, whereas semiaza-Bambusurils form anion channel motives.
At the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the research group is focused on two different fields: catalysis and polymers. In catalysis, the group studies photochemistry with olefin metathesis reactions, the effect of light-activated olefin metathesis catalysts on reaction outcome, and organocatalytic reaction based on halogenation of alcohols in the presence of the sub-stoichiometric amount of thioureas.
In polymers, the group utilizes ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) to develop new cross-linked polymers, especially with DCPD and its derivatives as monomers with controlled thermomechanical properties. The group also studies the single-chain collapse of linear polymers to nanoparticles via intra-chain cross-linking with dinuclear μ-halo(diene)Rh(I) complexes (Rh(I)-SCNPs) and investigates their intrinsic conductivities in comparison to organic conjugated polymers.