Steve's work explores the use of self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) formed from alkanethiols to improve the selectivity of catalytic materials. We have used SAMs to improve chemoselectivity in the conversion of unsaturated epoxides that can be derived from biomass and to improve the detection of transformer fault gases by metal-insulator-semiconductor sensors. This work incorporates aspects of numerous fields including heterogeneous catalysis, surface science, and chemical sensing.