On June 16, the lecture series of "HUST-NUS Academic Lecture Series" of Materials Science and Engineering were successfully held. Upon the invitation of Professor LU Xing from the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Professor ZHAO Yu from the Department of Chemistry, National University of Singapore (NUS) delivered a lecture entitled "Catalytic Stereoselective Access to Medium-sized Heterocycles: Discovery & Development". The lecture was hosted by Prof. LU Xing and more than 50 students and researchers from School of Materials Science and Engineering and School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering have attended the event online.

N-heterocycles molecules are of great importance in the field of pharmaceuticals, since a major part of the small-molecule medicine molecules include N-heterocycles groups. However, the efficient synthesis of these molecules especially the medium-sized N-heterocycles molecules remains highly challenging. In this talk, Professor ZHAO introduced the recent progress of his group in the direction of medium-sized heterocycles molecules. By innovating new synthesis routes and introducing Pd as catalyst, a collection of medium-sized N-heterocycles molecules have been synthesized. Moreover, these synthesis routes possess great advantages concerning the control of chirality. To this end, Prof. ZHAO showed the latest progress of his group in the field of cycloaddition and green chemistry.

Discovery of Pd-catalyzed nine-membered heterocycle synthesis by ZHAO group

During the Q&A session, Professor ZHAO had a thorough exchange with participants like Professor LIU from China Three Gorges University and Doctor Guo from School of Materials Science and Engineering, HUST, discussing the details like the possibility of autocatalysis, the stability of medium-sized heterocycles, and other problems may encounter in experiments, which provided new research ideas and directions for the study of medium-sized heterocycles.

Introduction to Speaker

ZHAO Yu obtained his B.S. in Chemistry at Peking University in 2002. 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, he was awarded the prestigious NRF fellowship from Singapore and joined NUS as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in July 2017. The research program in the ZHAO group mainly focuses on the discovery and development of efficient catalytic methodology to promote sustainable chemical synthesis, and application to medicinal and material sciences. He has published 50 original research articles in his independent career, and his work has been recognized by numerous awards including Thieme Chemistry Journal Award in 2016 and Tokyo Chemical Industry-SNIC Industry Award in Synthetic Chemistry in 2018.