Thesis advisor: Marc L. Snapper / Chapter 1: Over the past 100 years, ring expansion chemistry with non-stabilized diazoalkanes has grown slowly. While the intrinsic hazards and stigma associated with the use of diazoalkanes has been a serious impediment to more widespread development, a number of groups have made significant advances over the years. This chapter aims to provide a brief historical account of the most significant developments related to diazoalkane- based ring expansion methods. Chapter 2: The construction of stereogenic centers adjacent to ketones remains a challenging synthetic problem for chemists. Deficiencies with regard to reaction scope, efficiency, and generality remain. In contrast to the majority of other methods in the literature, stereoselective insertion of diazoalkanes provides a pathway to directly access enantiomerically enriched α-substituted cycloalkanones. In this chapter, an account of how we developed the first catalytic asymmetric diazoalkane-based ring expansion reactions is presented. Ring expansion of unfunctionalized cycloalkanones with diazoalkanes efficiently affords α-aryl substituted cycloalkanones with high enantiopurity. Additionally, this work led to the synthesis of new chiral bis(oxazoline) ligands and the discovery of a rapid method to assay the concentration of diazoalkane solutions. Chapter 3: Single-carbon ring expansion is a powerful synthetic disconnection, allowing chemists to construct or purchase the lower homologue of a ring system before expanding to the target ring size. Starting from a smaller ring size can often allow access to a broader array of transformations that proceed with greater stereoselection. In our approach to a class of natural products bearing a cis-decalin core, we successfully implemented a catalytic regioselective single-carbon ring expansion reaction in the context of an advanced synthetic intermediate. This chapter describes the experimental details behind the first catalytic single carbon cyclopentanone homologations and how we extended the method to more complex substrates. Chapter 4: Catalytic activation of sp2 hybridized electrophiles by nucleophilic catalysts has been studied extensively and proceeds through a well-defined mechanistic pathway. In constrast, activation of sp3 hybridized electrophiles in a similar fashion with small-molecule organocatalysts remains an elusive endeavor for chemists. This chapter describes prelimi- nary studies towards this lofty goal and how we discovered a new class of imidazole-based catalysts. Thorough mechanistic studies with the newly discovered catalysts ultimately proved that the reactions proceeded through a pathway that does not involve electrophile activation. However, inexpensive and commercially available imidazolium salts were found to catalyze Williamson etherification reactions under mild conditions through a mechanism that involves an unusual imidazolium alkoxide ion-pair. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Chemistry.