Organic Chemistry Seminar: Professor Yu Zhao, National University of Singapore (Host: Yan Xia)

Organic Chemistry Seminar: Professor Yu Zhao, National University of Singapore (Host: Yan Xia)

About the Seminar

"Catalytic Enantioselective Redox-Neutral Processes for Efficient Chemical Synthesis"

The development of economical and selective catalytic methods are vital to sustainable chemical synthesis. My group at National University of Singapore focuses on the identification of catalytic enantioselective redox-neutral transformations to access valuable chiral building blocks in organic synthesis. Such methods have the significant advantage of circumventing the redundant oxidation/reduction steps to reduce waste production. In my seminar, the stereo-convergent chiral amine synthesis from readily available racemic alcohols via borrowing hydrogen and enantioselective isomerization of racemic alkenyl alcohols will be discussed in details.

About the Speaker

Prof. Yu Zhao obtained his B.S. in Chemistry at Peking University in 2002 where he carried out his undergraduate research with Prof. Limin Qi on Surface Chemistry. In the same year, he went abroad to Boston College and obtained his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry in 2008 under the guidance of Prof. Marc L. Snapper and Prof. Amir H. Hoveyda. After that, he had the honor of working with Nobel laureate Prof. Richard R. Schrock at MIT as a postdoctoral associate in the field of organometallic chemistry. In 2011, Yu was awarded the National Research Foundation fellowship from Singapore and joined Department of Chemistry at NUS as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor of chemistry in July 2017. His research program at NUS mainly focuses on the discovery and development of efficient catalytic methodology to promote sustainable chemical synthesis, with a focus on stereoselective catalysis.