Dr. Wong is currently the Scripps Family Chair Professor of Chemistry. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from National Taiwan University, Ph.D. in Chemistry from MIT and postdoctoral training at Harvard University. His research interest is to develop new methods for making and studying complex carbohydrates and glycoproteins. He received the US Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award, ACS AC Cope Medal, Wolf Prize in Chemistry, Robert A. Welch Award and Tetrahedron Prize in Chemistry. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the US National Academy of Sciences.

Topic of Presentation: Green Chemistry toward Low-sugar Universal Vaccines and Glycoengineered Antibodies

Chi-Huey Wong

Department of Chemistry, The Scripps Research Institute

La Jolla, CA 92037 and Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica

Glycosylation is a reaction used by Nature to modulate the structure and function of biomolecules. Most human viruses and cancer cells, for example, depend on the host glycosylation machinery to create a sugar coat on the cell surface to complete their life cycle and escape immune response. Understanding the role of cell surface glycans in viral infection, cancer progression and immune response requires easy access to this class of complex materials. This lecture will present our recent development of efficient and environmentally friendly chemoenzymatic methods for the synthesis of complex carbohydrates and glycoproteins and development of low-sugar universal vaccines and glycoengineered antibodies with improved Fc-mediated killing.  

Christine Luscombe is a Professor the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan. She earned her Bachelor's from the University of Cambridge in 2000 and completed her PhD on surface modifications using supercritical CO₂. Her postdoctoral work at UC Berkeley focused on semiconducting polymers for organic photovoltaics. After joining the University of Washington in 2006, she received awards such as the NSF CAREER Award and Sloan Fellowship. She has published over 140 publications and studies semiconducting polymers and microplastics in marine organisms. She is currently the Editor-in-Chief for Polymer Chemistry, and holds leadership roles in MRS, IUPAC, and SPSJ.

Topic of Presentation: Advancing the Frontiers of Semiconducting Polymers Through Precision Synthesis

pi-Conjugated Polymers Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, 1919-1 Tancha, Onna-son, Okinawa, 904-0495, Japan

Direct arylation polymerization (DArP) has gained significant attention for synthesizing conjugated polymers, offering advantages over conventional cross-coupling methods. DArP reduces organometallic waste and eliminates the need for prefunctionalization, thus enhancing atom economy. It generates benign by-products and requires only halogen-functionalization of one monomer. However, challenges in achieving selectivity and control during polymerization persist.

To address these issues, our group explored synergistic catalysis using Pd/Ag or Au/Ag combinations. This approach enables reactions previously unattainable with single catalysts. We initially focused on developing a controlled DArP to produce polymers with targeted molecular weights and low dispersities. Using dual catalysts, one for C-H activation and another for controlled polymerization, we demonstrated some living characteristics, albeit with low molecular weights.

We extended this work to donor-acceptor copolymer synthesis via cross dehydrogenative coupling (CDC). Unlike standard DArP, which couples C-Br and C-H groups, CDC involves C-H/C-H coupling, where selectivity is critical to avoid homocoupling products. Employing a Pd/Ag cocatalyst system, we achieved high selectivity, producing high molecular weight polymers with minimal defects. The second chain-extension cross-coupling occurred at least an order of magnitude faster than the first coupling or homocoupling side reactions. DFT calculations revealed that the enhanced rate of cross-coupling in the second step stems from a strong Pd-thiophene interaction, which lowers the energy barrier for Pd-mediated C-H activation. These findings not only improve polymerization processes but also have broader applications in synthesizing complex molecules where C-H bond activation is challenging.

Davis Winkler has an unusually broad formal training in chemistry, physics, chemical engineering, and radioastronomy. He is a Professor of Biochemistry & Chemistry at La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science at La Trobe University, an adjunct Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the Monash Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences, and a visiting Professor in Pharmacy at the University of Nottingham. He previously spent over 30 years at CSIRO applying computational chemistry, AI, and machine learning methods to the design of drugs, agrochemicals, nanomaterials, and biomaterials. He is ranked 136th out of 100,000 medicinal chemists (Stanford 2023). He has authored over 250 refereed journal articles and book chapters (6 that are ISI Highly Cited), has an H index of 62 (GS), and is an inventor on 25 filed patents. He has provided key IP for three biotech startup companies. His awards include the CSIRO Medal for Business Excellence, RACI’s Adrien Albert award for medicinal chemistry and a Distinguished Fellowship, the ACS Herman Skolnik award for excellence in cheminformatics, a Royal Academy of Engineering (UK) Distinguished Fellowship (bioengineering) and the AMMA Medal (molecular design). He is past President of the Federation of Asian Chemical Societies (FACS) and the Asian Federation for Medicinal Chemistry (AFMC), and past Chairman and Director of the RACI Board

Topic of Presentation: The Exciting Potential of AI for Drug and Therapeutic Discovery

David A. Winkler

Professor of Biochemistry & Chemistry, La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science, La Trobe University, Bundoora 3086, Australia; Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University, Parkville 3052, Australia; Professor of Pharmacy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK

D.winkler@latrobe.edu.au

The current era has seen truly paradigm shifting scientific developments. We also know that the size of small molecule and materials spaces is for all practical purposes infinite, providing an inexhaustible supply of potential drugs and materials with valuable properties if we can find them. This recognition has seen a rapid increase in automation and robotics, allowing synthesis of new molecules and materials and measurement of properties orders of magnitude faster than before, generating massive databases of complex genetic, structural, chemical, property, and biological information.

The need to find ‘islands of chemical utility’ in an almost infinite palette of possibilities has seen the development of new data-driven machine learning methods (ML), like deep learning and large language models (LLMs), and an unprecedented increase in their applications. ML algorithms are universal approximators, prompting a parallel rise in their applications to most other aspects of modern life – medicine, finance, manufacturing, social media etc. we now have rapid and accurate quantum machine learning methods, generative methods that use trained machine learning models to suggest new molecules or materials with improved properties, accurate prediction of protein structures from sequence using AlphaFold and similar, the beginnings of general AI in LLMs like ChatGPT, massive ‘make on demand’ chemical libraries such as ZINC-22, nascent autonomous chemical discovery systems, and a rise in evolutionary AI methods for molecule and materials discovery.

This paper will discuss the drivers for these exciting developments and give examples where my collaborators and I have used AI and machine learning in biomaterials and regenerative medicine, drug design, energy materials and nanomaterials, cancer diagnostics, and corrosion control.

Keywords: Machine learning; drug design; artificial intelligence, materials discovery

References

1.   Hart, et al. Trust Not Verify? The Critical Need for Data Curation Standards in Materials Informatics. Chem. Mater. 2024 36, 9046

2.   Winkler, Computational repurposing of drugs for viral diseases and current and future pandemics, J. Math. Chem. 2024, 62, 2844

3.   Li et al. Rational Atom Substitution to Obtain Efficient, Lead-Free Photocatalytic Perovskites Assisted by Machine Learning and DFT Calculations, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2023, e202315002

4.   Thamarai Krishnan et al. Staging of colorectal cancer using lipid biomarkers and machine learning, Metabolom., 2023, 19, 84

5.   Machine Learning for Electrocatalyst and Photocatalyst Design and Discovery, Chem. Rev. 2022 122, 13478

6.   Muratov et al. A critical overview of computational approaches employed for COVID-19 drug discovery. Chem. Soc. Rev., 2021, 50, 9121

7.   Piplani et al. In silico comparison of SARS-CoV-2 virus spike protein-ACE2 binding affinities across species; significance for animal susceptibility and viral origin, npj Sci Rep., 2021, 11, 13063

8.   Szabo et al. Potent peptide antagonists of the thrombopoietin receptor as potential myelofibrosis drugs. Adv. Therapeut. 2021, 2000241

9.   Muratov et al. QSAR without Borders, Chem. Soc. Rev. 2020, 49, 3525

10. Discovery and optimization of materials using evolutionary approaches. Chem. Rev. 2016,116, 6107

11. Autefage et al. Sparse feature selection methods identify unexpected global cellular response to strontium-containing materials. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2015, 112, 4280

Professor Eiichi Nakamura is an organic chemist, holding the Molecular Technology Innovation Endowed Chair at The University of Tokyo. He has pioneered the use of atomic-resolution transmission electron microscopy to study molecular motion at the single-molecule level. He has received numerous honors, including the Medal with Purple Ribbon and the Order of the Sacred Treasure.

Topic of Presentation: Cinematic Chemistry: The Journey of Electron Microscopy from Organic Synthesis to Molecular Statistics

Recent technological innovations in electron microscopy, such as aberration correctors, high-speed imaging cameras, and continuous sample rotation, have ushered in a new era where we can, for the first time, analyze the behavior of individual molecules. In this lecture, I will introduce the new paradigm of “cinematic chemistry,” which has emerged from the single-molecule atomic-resolution time-resolved electron microscopy (SMART-TEM). I will use examples from single-molecule thermodynamics and kinetics based on ultra-fast imaging of individual molecules and reaction events, in situ structural and statistical analysis of crystal growth, and the mechanisms behind organic crystal disorder during electron diffraction experiments that has long confused electron microscopists. Our recent study has shown that the kinetics of electron diffraction peak decay provides quantitative information about the degree of freedom of the molecules in a crystal.

References

M. Koshino, T. Tanaka, N. Solin, K. Suenaga, H. Isobe, and E. Nakamura, Science, 316, 853 (2007); E. Nakamura, Acc. Chem. Res., 50, 1281–1292 (2017); D. Liu, J. Fu, O. Elishav, M. Sakakibara, K. Yamanouchi, B. Hirshberg, T. Nakamuro, E. Nakamura, Science, 384, 1212-1219 (2024) 

Greg Scholes is the William S. Tod Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University. Originally from Melbourne, Australia, he later undertook postdoctoral training at Imperial College London and University of California Berkeley. He started his independent career at the University of Toronto (2000-2014) where he was the D.J. LeRoy Distinguished Professor. He was appointed Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters in 2019. Dr. Scholes was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (London) in 2019 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2009. He served as Chair of Department at Princeton 2020-2023 and Director of an Energy Frontier Research Center (BioLEC) since 2018.

Topic of Presentation: From Coherence in Photosynthesis to Chemical Quantum Information Science

Gregory D. Scholes, Princeton University

The parallel and synergistic developments of atomic resolution structural information, new spectroscopic methods, their underpinning formalism, and the application of sophisticated theoretical methods have led to a step function change in our understanding of photosynthetic light harvesting. These new spectroscopic methods, in particular multidimensional spectroscopies, have enabled a transition from recording rates of processes to focusing on mechanism. Such studies indicated the possibility that advanced ultrafast techniques can give insights into the time evolution of the density matrix of the system. I will explain the story of how our understanding of these experiments evolved. We then ask, how might related developments enable advances in quantum information science? A defining characteristic of molecules is that they are intrinsically complex quantum systems with many degrees of freedom, exhibiting remarkable variety. Molecules, therefore, have different quantum properties than atomic systems, including solids. Our aim in in chemical quantum information science (QIS) should then be to leverage these distinctions. This is where transformative advancements lie. I will outline and motivate the QIS “wish list” for chemistry that we described in a recent report.

Prof. Ying was Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT (1992-2005), and Founding Executive Director of the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology and NanoBio Lab, Singapore (2003-2023). She is Chairman of the Bioengineering and Nanomedicine Department of King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre, Saudi Arabia. She has authored over 400 articles with >51,750 citations (h index: 107), and >200 primary patents. She has won numerous awards on nanomaterials research, including Mustafa Prize – Top Scientific Achievement Award and King Faisal Prize in Science. She has been elected to German National Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina, U.S. National Academy of Inventors and U.S. National Academy of Engineering.

Topic of Presentation: Design and Synthesis of Nanomaterials for Biomedical and Energy Applications

Jackie Y. Ying

Department of Bioengineering and Nanomedicine

King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

E-mail: jyying66@gmail.com

www.jyyinglab.net

Nanostructured materials can be designed with sophisticated features to fulfill the complex requirements of advanced material applications. Our laboratory has developed organic and inorganic nanoparticles and nanocomposites for advanced drug delivery, antimicrobial, stem cell culture, and tissue engineering applications. In addition, we have nanofabricated microfluidic systems for drug screening, in vitro toxicology, and diagnostic applications. The nanosystems allow for the rapid and automated processing of drug candidates and clinical samples in tiny volumes, greatly facilitating drug testing, genotyping assays, infectious disease detection, point-of-care monitoring, as well as cancer diagnosis and prognosis.

We have also synthesized metallic, metal oxide and semiconducting nanoclusters, nanocrystals and nanosheets of controlled dimensions and morphology. The nano-sized building blocks are used to create multifunctional systems with excellent dispersion and unique properties. Nanoporous materials of a variety of metal oxide and organic backbone have also been created with high surface areas and well-defined porosities. These nanostructured materials are successfully tailored towards energy and sustainability applications. 

Professor Lisa Hall leads Cambridge Analytical Biotechnology (CAB) at the University of Cambridge, focusing on mechanisms enabling biology to interface with bioelectronics in in vitro diagnostics. CAB has a special interest in improving access to diagnostics in low and middle income countries (LMICs). Lisa was the recipient of a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List (2015), for services to Higher Education and to Sport for the Disabled. In December 2022 she was announced as winner of the 2022 MRC Millennium Medal. Lisa also won the Gold Medal from the Royal Society of Chemistry (Analytical Division) in 2005 and served as Vice President of the Analytical Division of Royal Society of Chemistry (2006–08). She received the Alec Hough-Grassby Memorial Award from the Institute of Measurement and Control in 2009 and in 2020, the Oxburgh Medal for outstanding contribution to measurement, instrumentation and control in the field of environmental science and engineering.

Topic of Presentation: Biosensors Without Frontiers: Nucleic Acid Testing in Low Resource Areas

Hall EAH*, Seevaratnam DJ, Roberts AL

Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge, CB3 0AS, UK

*corresponding author

The dynamics of infectious disease (ID) require fast accurate diagnosis for effective management and treatment. Without in-vitro diagnostics (IVDs) syndromic or presumptive actions are followed, where positive cases may go undetected in the community, or mistreated due to wrong diagnosis. This undermines effective clinical decision-making and disease containment. However, biosensor-diagnostics used in low and middle income countries (LMICs) usually have to be imported at high cost, making their use prohibitive. 

The required biological reagents for a diagnostic are typically the largest proportion of the cost (50-95%). Taking a ‘gene to diagnostic’ approach, a rational design will be reported for a diagnostic platform that can be manufactured locally, with basic infrastructure. We use synthetic biology to design multifunctional fusion-enzymes for point-of-care diagnostics with locally resourced materials. 

The platform is demonstrated for nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) requiring a DNA polymerase fusion protein which can be isolated on silica via a fused R5 silica-affinity peptide. Data from a clinical study of malaria are presented and the results discussed in comparison with qPCR, providing the first step towards low cost diagnostics in resource poor areas. This could deliver a sustained improvement in healthcare, while also developing the local economy.

Peter Mahaffy is a 3M National Teaching Fellow, Professor of Chemistry at the King’s University in Edmonton, Canada, and director of the King’s Centre for Visualization in Science (www.kcvs.ca), which provides digital learning resources used by a half-million students, educators, and the public from over 100 countries each year. His current research and professional work is at the interfaces of chemistry education, systems thinking and sustainability, the uses of interactive visualization tools to facilitate the learning of science, and the responsible uses of chemistry. Mahaffy served for six years as chair of the International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry’s (IUPAC) Committee on Chemistry Education (CCE) and member of the IUPAC Bureau. He was a charter member of the International Council of Science (ICSU) Committee on Freedom and Responsibility in the Conduct of Science and served on the working group on education and outreach for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013. He is presently co-chair of an IUPAC project on systems thinking and sustainability in chemistry and a titular member of the IUPAC Committee on Ethics, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. His work has been recognized with national and international awards from the Chemical Institute of Canada, College Chemistry Canada, the American Chemical Society, and IUPAC. In March 2025 he will receive the ACS George C. Pimental Award for outstanding contributions to chemistry education.

Topic of Presentation: Realizing Chemistry’s Pivotal Role in our Sustainable Future

Peter G Mahaffy

The King’s University and the King’s Centre for Visualization in Science, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Earth system science makes it increasingly clear that the scale and kinetics of anthropogenic transformation of matter have rapidly pushed the control variables for interconnected Earth systems closer to tipping points. The planetary sustainability and human security challenges facing our planet are so pressing that they require urgent attention by all of humanity through a convergence of disciplinary and cross-sectoral approaches. Chemistry, the science of transformation of matter, has a pivotal role to play in addressing the unintended consequences that arise from the large-scale material transformation by humans over the past fifty years. As the World Chemistry Congress begins, with a theme of “Chemistry for Our Sustainable Future,” we can no longer see sustainability and the contributions of our central science as a goal, but rather an imperative.

The clock is ticking as we rapidly approach the target dates for meeting the UN Sustainable Development goals (2030) and the 2050 global energy net-zero agreements to mitigate the impact of humans on the energy balance of our planet. What re-imagining of chemistry education, research, and industry must we collectively embrace to practice chemistry responsibly in our rapidly changing world? IUPAC, through activities and structures that unite chemists and chemistry educators worldwide, plays a strategic role in guiding chemistry education, research and practice toward the emergence of sustainability. We will highlight IUPAC projects that:

(a) resource implementation of systems thinking in chemistry for sustainability with strands focused on chemistry as a sustainability science, formal chemistry education, and chemical industry; and

(b) introduce principles to guide chemists in the responsible practice of chemistry, informed by our pressing sustainability challenges and ethics, diversity, equity, and inclusion values. The project task group will formally launch the “IUPAC Guiding Principles of Responsible Chemistry” website at this Congress.

Keywords: sustainability, systems thinking, responsible chemistry, chemistry education

References

1. Richardson K, Steffen W, Lucht W, Bendtsen J, Cornell SE, Donges JF, et al. Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries. Science Advances. 2023 9(37): DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adh2458 

2. Whalen JM, Matlin SA, Holme TA, Stewart JJ, Mahaffy PG. A Systems Approach to Chemistry Is Required to Achieve Sustainable Transformation of Matter: The Case of Ammonia and Reactive Nitrogen. ACS Sustainable Chem Eng. 2022 Oct 3;10(39):12933–47. 

Prof. Tamotsu Takahashi obtained Ph.D. degree from the University of Tokyo graduate school in 1983. And then he became Assistant Professor at engineering department of the University of Tokyo. He was promoted to Associate Professor at Institute for Molecular Science in Okazaki in 1991. He moved Hokkaido University in 1995 as full Professor. He retired in 2020 and now emeritus Professor of Hokkaido University. In 2024, he became President of Foundation for Interaction in Science & Technology, Japan.  

Topic of Presentation: Continuous Movement of Carbon Atoms in Organic Molecules: Merry-Go-Round Reaction

Continuous movement of carbon atoms in organic molecules is a challenging target in chemistry. I proposed a new concept to achieve such movement using equilibrium of two organic molecules where positions of carbon atoms are not the same. Even though the mechanism of the equilibrium is not clear, more stable compound is formed among the molecules in the equilibrium by moving of the target carbon atoms in the organic molecules.

I applied this new concept for dihydroindenyl moiety on titanium, and I could developed that two red carbons at the bridge-head positions of dihydroindenyl moved around the six-membered ring. I named this reaction, “Merry-Go-Round Reaction”.

Figure. Travelling of carbon atoms in organic molecules　Merry-Go-Round Reaction

Véronique Gouverneur secured a PhD in chemistry at the Université Catholique de Louvain (LLN, Belgium) under the supervision of Professor Léon Ghosez. In 1992, she moved to a postdoctoral position with Professor Richard Lerner at the Scripps Research Institute (California, USA). She then took a position of Maître de Conférence at the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg (France); during this period, she worked with Dr Charles Mioskowski and was Associate Member of the “Institut de Science et d'Ingénierie Supramoléculaires” led by Professor Jean-Marie Lehn. She started her independent research career at the University of Oxford in 1998 in the Department of Chemistry and was promoted to Professor of Chemistry in 2008. She also held a tutorial fellowship at Merton College Oxford until 2022. Since 2022, she became the Waynflete Professor of Chemistry at Magdalen College. Her research aims at developing new approaches to address long-standing problems in the sustainable synthesis of fluorinated molecules including pharmaceutical drugs, probes for imaging (Positron Emission Tomography) and components for material sciences. She has authored > 230 peer-reviewed publications and patents. Her research was rewarded by numerous prizes and distinctions, including the ACS Award for Creative work in Fluorine Chemistry 2015, RSC Tilden Prize 2016, RSC Organic Stereochemistry Award 2019, Prelog Medal 2019, Henri Moissan Prize in 2021, Arthur C. Cope Award 2022, EuChemS Female Organic Chemist of the Year Award (EuChemS) 2022, Prous Institute - Overton and Meyer Award for New Technologies in Drug Discovery 2024, and the Royal Society Davy Medal 2024. Véronique was elected Member of the European Academy of Sciences (EURASC) in 2017, Fellow of the Royal Society in 2019 and International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2022.

Rethinking Fluorine Chemistry with Global Challenges in Mind

Véronique Gouverneur

University of Oxford, United Kingdom

The Gouverneur laboratory has developed new approaches for the synthesis of fluorochemicals for applications in the life and material sciences. This work has enhanced our fundamental understanding of alkali metal fluoride reactivity, and led to the invention of hydrogen bonding phase transfer catalysis (HBPTC), a new concept in organocatalysis opening new opportunities in organic chemistry. In this lecture, the discussion will focus on innovative approaches aimed at addressing the challenges currently facing the fluorochemical industry. A specific highlight is the demonstration that it is possible to convert naturally occurring fluorspar (CaF₂) into complex fluorochemicals applying a method that bypasses the necessity to manufacture hydrofluoric acid, a toxic and highly dangerous acid. Another recent advance is the design of a method for the destruction of PFAS coupled with fluorine recovery in the spirit of a circular fluorine economy.

Prof. Tao Zhang received his PhD in 1989 from Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). After one year in University of Birmingham as a post-doctoral fellow, he joined DICP again where he was promoted to a full professor in 1995. He has been the director-general of DICP for 10 years (2007-2016). He was also the vice president of CAS (2016-2023).

His research interests are mainly focused on Single-Atom Catalysis and Catalytic Conversion of Biomass. He discovered a new process from cellulose to ethylene glycol in 2008 and has accomplished a pilot demonstration (1000 ton/year) in 2023. Particularlly, In 2011，he coined the new concept “Single-Atom Catalysis”(Nature Chemistry, 2011, 3, 634), which is now one of the hot research frontiers in catalysis. He has won many important awards, such as Future Science Prize(2024)，Tang Aoqing Award (2024) of Chinese Chemical Society (CCS)，Advance of Catalysis Award of the Asian-Pacific Association of Catalysis Societies (2023), Distinguished Award of CCS-Sinopec (2022), ChinaNano Award (2018), and National Invention Prize(2008). Prof Tao Zhang is the author or co-author of more than 600 peer-reviewed publications and 110 patents (H-index 120 and more than 70000 citations). He serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Chinese Journal of Catalysis, Associate Editor of JACS, Co-Chair of the Editorial Advisory Board of Chemistry – A European Journal，Editorial Board Members of Applied Catalysis B, Green Chemistry, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering，ChemPhysChem and Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research. He was elected as academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2013, fellow of TWAS in 2018, and international fellow of Canadian Engineering Academy in 2020.

Single-Atom Catalysis

Tao Zhang*

(Email: taozhang@dicp.ac.cn)

State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian, 116023, China

Single-atom catalysis has emerged as a new and possibly the most active frontier in heterogeneous catalysis. With the great potential for maximizing the atom efficiency and the well-defined active sites in a catalytic process, single-atom catalysts (SACs) have received incredibly increased attentions. Great advance has been achieved in the past few years in the preparation of highly efficient SACs, the exploration of new reactions, as well as the mechanism understanding of catalysis. In this lecture, I will introduce the fast progress of SACs and mainly focus on the research in my group to address some of the fundamental issues about single-atom catalysis, including the nature of the active sites in SACs, the essential role of coordination structure of single atoms, as well as the dynamics of SACs during reactions. Moreover, the significant opportunities and challenges in this new field of catalysis will be discussed.

Zhaomin Hou is the Chief Scientist and Director of Organometallic Chemistry Laboratory at the RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research and the Group Director of Advanced Catalysis Research Group and Center Deputy Director of the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science. He also serves as an Executive Editor of Journal of the American Chemical Society. His research interests cover broad areas of organometallic chemistry and catalysis, including the synthesis of new organometallic complexes having novel structures, the development of more efficient, selective catalysts for olefin polymerization and organic synthesis, and the activation and efficient utilization of small molecules. Current research projects in his group include (1) synthesis of self-healing polymers by sequence-controlled copolymerization of polar and non-polar olefins. (2) C-H activation and functionalization, (3) N2 activation and functionalization, (4) using CO2 as a building block for organic synthesis. He is a recipient of the Japan Academy Prize (2022), the Chemical Society of Japan Award (2019), the Chinese Chemical Society Yaozeng Huang Award in Organometallic Chemistry (2014), the Award of the Society of Polymer Science, Japan (2012), the Rare-Earth Society of Japan Award (2009), the Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (2008), the JSPS Prize (2007), and the Mitsui Chemicals Catalysis Science Award (2007).

Topic of Presentation: Pushing Boundaries: Innovations in Organometallic Complexes and Catalysts for Advanced Chemical Transformations 

Zhaomin Hou

Advanced Catalysis Research Group, RIKEN Censer for Sustainable Resource Science, 

2-1 Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan

Organometallic Chemistry Laboratory, RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research, 

2-1 Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan

In this lecture, I would like to share our studies on the development of innovative organometallic complexes and catalysts, aiming at achieving unprecedented chemical transformations and advancing functional polymer synthesis. Representative examples include dinitrogen (N2) activation and functionalization in well-defined multimetallic hydride frameworks, asymmetric C-H functionalization by organo rare-earth catalysts, and creating novel self-healing polymers by catalyst-controlled sequence regular polymerization and copolymerization of olefins and dienes. Our research underscores the crucial role of catalyst development in chemical synthesis. Looking ahead, exploring the potential of organometallic complexes and catalysts in diverse chemical transformations will continue pushing the frontiers of synthetic methodologies to meet the demands of sustainable and efficient chemical processes.