Biaryl compounds have attracted considerable 
synthetic interest due to their presence in natural products and use as ligands in transition metal-catalyzed reactions.  Our overall goal is to develop a procedure to expediently synthesize polysubstituted biaryls with tunable and orthogonal functionality.  Utilizing the Diels-Alder reaction, tetra-ortho-substituted biaryls have been synthesized in only 4 steps from commercially available materials.  Further functionalization via Suzuki, Stille and Negishi palladium couplings will be discussed as well as reduction of the nitro and phosphine oxide moieties.