Prof. Ian Baxendale obtained his first degree from the University of Leicester graduating with a BSc 1st class honours in Chemistry. He remained at Leicester to continue his studies pursuing a PhD under the supervision of Prof. Pavel Kocovsky. In 1999 he moved to a postdoctoral position with Prof. Steven V. Ley at the University of Cambridge. In 2003 he was awarded a Wolfson Royal Society Fellowship. Then in 2005 he co-founded the Innovative Technology Centre (ITC) with Prof. Ley as a centre of excellence for the study and development of advanced chemical synthesis tools and methodologies where he was the centre’s Director. In 2008 he was promoted to a Senior Research Associate within the Department of Chemistry at Cambridge and then in 2009 was awarded a prestigious Royal Society University Research Fellowship and become a member of the Chemistry Departments teaching faculty. In 2005 Prof.’s Baxendale and Ley established a spin-out company; Reaxa Ltd, as a joint venture between the University of Cambridge and Avecia plc. The company was focused upon the developed of enabling tools such as immobilised catalysts and metal scavengers for bulk scale production of high volume intermediates and APIs. In 2010 the company sold its scavenger range (QuadraPure™ and QuadraSil™ scavengers – leading technology in metal extraction and purification for pharma manufacturing) to Johnson Matthey. Then divested its EnCat™ encapsulated catalyst technology to S. Amit & Co., a Mumbai-based chemistry services provider. The remaining company assets were integrated into a new venture Yorkshire Process Technology Ltd. In 2012 Ian moved to Durham to take up the Chair of Synthetic Chemistry as a fully tenured Professor.
His current research interests are the design and implementation of new enabling technologies such as Flow Chemical Synthesis (FCS), Synthesis Automation Methodologies (SAM), microwave reactors and immobilised reagents and scavengers to expedite complex chemical syntheses. The success of his academic career is reflected by >125 publications (H-index=36), including several reviews and book chapters, with a total of >3900 citations.
Dr. Terunori Fujita studied chemistry, (specifically, natural product synthesis), with Professors Takeshi Matsumoto and Haruhisa Shirahama at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan, and obtained his Ph.D. in 1988 in supramolecular chemistry from the Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg, France, under the supervision of Professor Jean-Marie Lehn.
In 1982 he joined Mitsui Petrochemical Industries, Ltd., now Mitsui Chemicals, Inc. In 2001 he was appointed a Mitsui research fellow for his contributions to the development of new olefin polymerization catalysts, now known as FI catalysts, and in 2005 he became the general manager of the catalysis science laboratory at Mitsui Chemicals, Inc. He became an executive officer in 2008, and then a board director of the company in 2009. He became the center executive of the research center in 2010. Since 2011 he has been the president & CEO of Mitsui Chemicals Singapore R&D Center, Pte. Ltd., Mitsui Chemicals’ R&D hub for ASEAN countries and India.
He has about 400 patents and 160 publications including research papers, reviews, and book contributions. He has received a number of awards, which include the Chemical Society of Japan Award for Creative Work in 2003, the Award of the Society of Polymer Science, Japan, in 2005, the Japan Petroleum Institute Award in 2008, the Yamazaki-Teiichi Prize also in 2008, the Catalysis Society of Japan Award in 2010, and the Synthetic Organic Chemistry Award, Japan, in 2011. Additionally, in 2010, he was awarded the Commendation for Science and Technology by the Japanese Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. He has been a member of the Science Council of Japan since 2011.
Prof. Alois Fürstner was born in 1962 in Bruck an der Mur, Austria. He received his Ph.D. in 1987 from the Technical University of Graz under Prof. Weidmann. In 1990-1991, he was engaged in postdoctoral studies with Prof. Oppolzer at the University of Geneva. He completed his habilitation in 1992 at the Technical University of Graz and obtained a position as a professor at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung. In 1998, he was promoted to director. He is also affiliated with the University of Dortmund. His contributions to chemistry have been recognized with numerous awards, including the Dozentenstipendium of the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie (1994), the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (2002), the Otto Bayer Prize (2006), Janssen Pharmaceutica Prize for Creativity in Organic Synthesis (2008), Lilly European Distinguished Lectureship Award (2008), Prelog Medal, ETH Zurich, Switzerland (2011), Prix Jaubert of the University of Geneva (2011), Karl Ziegler Prize of the German Chemical Society (2013), Kitasato Medal, Tokyo, Japan (2013), Hans Herloff Inhoffen Medal (2013), Gay-Lussac-Humboldt Prize (2014)
Research in the Fürstner group focuses on organometallic chemistry and its application to the synthesis of complex natural products. Specific areas of focus include alkene and alkyne metathesis, development of new metal catalyzed and mediated reactions, and the preparation and use of active metals.
Prof. Andy Hor [D.Sc.(Lond), D.Phil.(Oxford), B.Sc.(Hon)(Imperial College), Postdoc(Yale)] is Professor of Chemistry in the National University of Singapore and President of Singapore National Institute of Chemistry. He has published over 240 international papers in heterometallic syntheses, homogeneous catalysis and supramolecular assembly with about 3,500 citations and an h-index of 29. He has been conferred different fellowship such as Humboldt, Wilsmour, Anthony Mason, Frances Lion Memorial, Jackson Memorial and professorship at Nagoya, Sydney, Melbourne, Münster, Strasbourg, etc. He is the Associate Editor (Commissioning) of Aust. J. Chem. (CSIRO) and member of the international advisory panel of Chem. Asian J. (VCH/Wiley) and Inorg. Chim. Acta. (Elsevier) He has delivered numerous invited/keynote/plenary lectures in different conferences and symposia, and will chair the 41st International Coordination Chemistry Conference (ICCC) in Singapore in 2014. To date, he has supervised about 30 Ph.D., 20 M.Sc. students and over 100 B.Sc. Hon students as well as 70 SRP, 15 SMP and over 80 school students on projects. Over the years, he has received numerous teaching awards, including the Outstanding Educator Award (NUS) in 2002. He is currently the advisor of Victoria Junior College, Nanyang Girls’ High School and World Scientific.
Prof. Ang Li received his B.S. degree at Peking University, Beijing, China
(Prof. Zhen Yang) in 2004. and Ph.D degree from The Scripps Research Institute, California, USA (Prof. K. C. Nicolaou) in 2009. Afterwards, he became research fellow, Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences, Singapore (Prof. K. C. Nicolaou), and in 2010, he promoted Professor, State Key Laboratory of Bioorganic and Natural Product Chemistry, Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China. His research interest is total synthesis of structually and biologically interesting natural products. He has received many awards including Asian Core Program Lectureship Award (2013), Chinese Chemical Society Wei-Shan Award for Synthetic Chemistry(2013), China Pharmaceutical Association–SERVIER Youth Medicinal Chemist Award (2013), Thieme Chemistry Journal Award (2013), Asian Core Program Lectureship Award (2012), Eli Lilly Graduate Fellowship (2009), and so on.
Prof. Hsiao-hua (Bruce) Yu was born in Taipei, Taiwan. He received his B.S. degree in chemistry from National Taiwan University (Prof. Man-kit Leung and Prof. Tien-Yau Luh) and his Ph.D. degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in organic chemistry (Prof. Timothy M. Swager). He became interested in chemistry when he was young and he was the first gold medalist for Taiwan in the International Chemistry Olympiad competition. He worked on design, syntheses, and applications of molecular actuators for actuating and sensing applications. After completing his postdoctoral research in Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Prof. Paula T. Hammond), he joined Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, Singapore as a Team Leader and Senior Research Scientist. In Singapore, his research focus on utilizing organic conductive materials, particularly conducting polymers for biosensors. In 2008, he received an Initiative Research Unit fund from RIKEN, the most prestigious research institute in Japan, as a young principle investigator to work on the area “synthetic organic chemistry directed toward materials science”. He relocated to Japan and initiated a research concept he described as “organic conductive biomaterials”, where he develops an independent and multidisciplinary research program though the triangle of chemistry, electronic materials, and biomedical/biological investigations based on molecular and nano-assembled building blocks of conducting polymers. He is not limited his work in science and technology level and eager to see real applications blossomed from the crossroads among molecular science, nanotechnology and biotechnology.
- Past speakers