Mr. & Mrs. Sun Chan Memorial Award in Organic Chemistry
Professor Yi TANG
University of California, Los Angeles
(Los Angeles)

Yi Tang received his undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering and Material Science from Penn State University.  He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from California Institute of Technology under the guidance of Prof. David A. Tirrell.  After NIH postdoctoral training in Chemical Biology from Prof. Chaitan Khosla at Stanford University, he started his independent career at University of California Los Angeles in 2004.  He is currently the Chancellor Professor at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UCLA, and holds joint appointments in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; and Department of Bioengineering.  His lab is interested in identifying new enzymes from the biosynthetic pathways of polyketides, nonribosomal peptides, terpenoids, alkaloids and hybrid compounds.   His group has mined numerous cryptic natural products from fungal species, including potential immunosuppressant polyketides from pathogenic fungi.  His group is also interested in combining enzyme discovery and protein engineering towards the green synthesis of important pharmaceuticals.  They demonstrated the potential of this approach by establishing a biocatalytic approach for making the blockbuster drug simvastatin.

His recent awards include the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Allan P. Colburn Award (2009), the Young Investigator Award from the Society of Industrial Microbiology (2010), the American Chemical Society (ACS) Biochemical Technology Division (BIOT) Young Investigator Award (2011), the ACS Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (2012), the EPA Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award (2012), NIH DP1 Director Pioneer Award (2012) and the ACS Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry (2014).  

N. C. Yang Memorial Lecture Award
Professor Dawei MA
Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, CAS
(Shanghai)

Dawei MA received his PhD in 1989 from Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry (SIOC), and did his postdoctoral studies at the University of Pittsburgh and Mayo Clinic. He returned to SIOC in 1994, and was appointed as research professor in 1995. From 2001 to 2010 he was the director of State Key Laboratory of Bioorganic & Natural Products Chemistry. He is presently the deputy director of SIOC and an associate editor of Journal of Organic Chemistry. His research interests currently focus on the development of new synthetic methodologies, the total synthesis of complex natural products and their SAR and action mode studies, as well as the discovery of small modulators for target proteins and special biological processes.

Bau Family Award 2016
Professor Xile HU
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
(Lausanne)

Xile HU was born in 1978 in a small village in Putian, southeastern China. He studied chemistry at Peking University and obtained a B.S. degree in June 2000. Shortly thereafter, he moved to the United States and began his doctoral study under the guidance of Prof. Karsten Meyer at the University of California, San Diego. His dissertation research focused on the coordination chemistry of tripodal N-heterocyclic carbene ligands. After receiveing a Ph.D. degree in inorganic chemistry in December 2004, he became a postdoctoral scholar in the group of Prof. Jonas C. Peters at the California Institute of Technology in February 2005. At Caltech, he worked on the development of molecular hydrogen evolution catalysts.

In July 2007, he was appointed as a tenure-track assistant professor of chemistry in the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. He is the founder and director of the Laboratory of Inorganic Synthesis and Catalysis. His laboratory is developing catalysts made of  earth-abundant elements for chemical transformations pertinent to synthesis, energy, and sustainability. He was promoted to associate professor in January 2013 and full professor in June 2016.

Singapore National Institute of Chemistry Plenary Speaker 
Professor Gregory FU
Altair Professor of Chemistry
California Institute of Technology
(Pasadena)

Prof. Greg Fu received a B.S. degree in 1985 from MIT, where he worked in the laboratory of Prof. Barry Sharpless. After earning a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1991 under the guidance of Prof. Dave Evans, Prof. Fu spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Bob Grubbs at Caltech. In 1993, he returned to MIT, where he served on the faculty until 2012. In 2012, he was appointed the Altair Professor of Chemistry at Caltech. The research interests of the Fu laboratory include metal-catalyzed coupling reactions and the design of chiral catalysts. In particular, the group is focused on nickel-catalyzed enantioselective cross-couplings of alkyl electrophiles and on photoinduced, copper-catalyzed carbon–heteroatom bond-forming reactions (collaboration with Prof. Jonas Peters). Prof. Fu received the Corey Award of the American Chemical Society in 2004, the Mukaiyama Award of the Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry of Japan in 2006, and the Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry of the American Chemical Society in 2012. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007) and of the National Academy of Sciences (2014). Prof. Fu serves as an associate editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Professor Yi LU
Professor of Chemistry
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
(Urbana-Champaign)

Dr. Yi Lu received his B.S. degree from Peking University in 1986, and Ph.D. degree from University of California at Los Angeles in 1992. After two years of postdoctoral research in Professor Harry B. Gray group at the Caltech, Dr. Lu started his own independent career in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 1994. He is now Jay and Ann Schenck Professor of Chemistry in the Departments of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Bioengineering and Materials Science and Engineering. He is also a member of the Center for Biophysics and Computational Biology, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and Institute of Genomic Biology. His research interests lie at the interface between chemistry and biology. Specific areas of current interests include a) design and engineering of functional metalloproteins as environmentally benign catalysts in renewable energy generation and pharmaceuticals; b) Fundamental understanding of DNAzymes and their applications in environmental monitoring, medical diagnostics, and targeted drug delivery; and c) Employing principles from biology for directed assembly of nanomaterials with controlled morphologies and its applications in imaging and medicine. Dr. Lu has received numerous research and teaching awards, including the Royal Society of Chemistry Applied Inorganic Chemistry Award (2015), Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2015), and has been named to the Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers list for 2015.

Professor Zhixiang YU
Professor of Chemistry
Peking University
(Beijing)