Professor Corey Stephenson was born in Collingwood, Ontario, Canada and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Waterloo in 1998. He completed graduate studies under the direction of Professor Peter Wipf at the University of Pittsburgh before joining the lab of Professor Erick M. Carreira at ETH Zürich. In September 2007, he joined the Department of Chemistry at Boston University as an Assistant Professor and was granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor in February, 2013. In July 2013, he joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Michigan as Associate Professor of Chemistry. In September 2015, Corey was promoted to full Professor.

His research interests are focused primarily upon the development of new strategies and methodologies for the synthesis of natural products. Of particular interest are the discovery of practical new processes which utilize the redox chemistry of visible light activated metal complexes. Visible light sensitization is an attractive means to initiate organic reactions due to the lack of visible light absorbance by organic compounds thereby reducing the side reactions that are often associated with photochemical reactions conducted with high energy UV light. These photocatalysts offer a means to selectively functionalize organic molecules with the appropriate choice of an excited state quencher. These processes offer improved chemoselectivity (and strategic advantages when employed in total synthesis) over current approaches while also enabling the reduction of stoichiometric waste byproducts. In particular, we are focusing our efforts in the following areas: (1) the development of new methodologies based upon visible light initiated electron transfer reactions; (2) applications of these methods to complex natural product synthesis; (3) technology-enabled reaction discovery and photocatalysis using mesoflow and microfluidics chemistry; and (4) new approaches to biomass conversion.