José was born and raised in Jbeil (Byblos), Lebanon. He completed his B.Sc. in Chemistry and B.Sc. in Biology with High Distinction at the Lebanese American University (LAU) in 2018. During his undergraduate studies, he worked in Dr. Sama Sleiman’s Lab as well as in Dr. Brigitte Wex’s Lab. In Fall 2018, he joined Prof. Bruce Arndtsen’s group at McGill University where he is involved in developing catalytic platforms for electrophile generation, isotope labeling of pharmaceuticals and multi-component reactions for modular assembly of heterocycles. Outside chemistry, he is most interested in music, religion and history. He spends the vast majority of his free time however with J.S. Bach, usually at the pipe organ.

Publications:

1) "A metal-catalysed functional group metathesis approach to the carbon isotope labelling of carboxylic acids"
R. Garrison Kinney, José Zgheib, Pierre-Louis Lagueux-Tremblay, Cuihan Zhou, Haifeng Yang, Jingwei Li, Donald R. Gauthier Jr*, Bruce A. Arndtsen *
Nat. Chem. 2024, 16, s41557-024-01447-7.

2) "Fragmentation and reassembly"
José Zgheib and Bruce A. Arndtsen*
Nat. Chem. 2021, 13, 110-111.

3) "Palladium catalyzed synthesis of indolizines via the carbonylative coupling of bromopyridines, imines and alkynes"
Sébastien A. Roy, José Zgheib, Cuihan Zhou and Bruce A. Arndtsen*
Chem. Sci. 2021, 12, 2251-2256.