Loughborough University is a top-ten rated university in England for research intensity (REF2014) and an outstanding 66% of the work of Loughborough’s academic staff who were eligible to be submitted to the REF was judged as ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’, compared to a national average figure of 43%. In choosing Loughborough for your research, you’ll work alongside academics who are leaders in their field. You will benefit from comprehensive support and guidance from our Doctoral College, including tailored careers advice, to help you succeed in your research and future career. Chiral amino acids whether proteinogenic (derived from proteins) or non-proteinogenic are ubiquitous and integral building blocks of numerous natural products and drug candidate molecules (e.g. antibiotics vancomycin / amoxicillin). Currently the bench mark synthetic methodology for installing this chiral centre is the asymmetric Strecker reaction, which relies on using highly toxic HCN or TMSCN as its key reagent. This research programme will address this issue by the formation of this key chiral centre contained within non-proteinogenic aryl- and hetero-aryl glycine amino acids via an asymmetric addition of arenes / heteroarenes to allenamides: a reaction commonly known as ‘hydroarylation’. Allenamides have become an increasingly valuable group of compounds that contain two double-bonds on an adjacent carbon which are then attached directly to a nitrogen atom tempered with an electron withdrawing functionality. We have previously shown that it is possible to selectively activate allenamides to nucleophilic attack using ‘gold-catalysis’. We will introduce this new chiral centre by an asymmetric ‘gold-catalysed’ hydroarylation reaction manifold. Once this ‘gold catalysed asymmetric hydroarylation’ transformation has been achieved the products of this transformation will then be converted, in only one synthetic step, to the desired aryl- and hetero-aryl glycine targets.