The palladium-catalyzed formation of carbon-nitrogen bonds has been a major focus of our research group for the past two decades and has become a general and straightforward approach for the synthesis of amines.  Current research in the group is focused on improvements on ligand and precatalyst design that would allow synthetically challenging carbon-nitrogen bond formation processes to occur under mild reaction conditions.  Recent results in the area include the development of conditions for the coupling of sterically demanding amines with aryl halides, the coupling of amines with unprotected five-membered heteroaryl bromides, and the synthesis of palladium and nickel precatalysts for carbon-nitrogen and carbon-carbon bond forming reactions.  Improved ligands and reaction conditions are also currently being pursued for related carbon-oxygen bond forming reactions.  We have conducted mechanistic studies under stoichiometric and catalytic conditions to try to better understand individual steps of the catalytic cycle and mitigate off-cycle processes that reduce catalytic efficiency.