Guest Seminar - Forging Complex Alcohols Using Simp-ols via Photocatalysis
Alcohols are at the heart of sustainable development regarding both material and energy. The scale and
diversity of alcohols needed in modern society is enormous. However, the traditional methods for alcohol synthesis
often requires excessive amount of reductant/oxidant, which takes extra step to synthesize and reduces the overall
atom economy. Therefore, the development of more sustainable "green" alcohol synthesis is one of the core tasks of
synthetic community. We have developed a series of photocatalytic synthesis for more complex alcohols using
simple alcohol/amine feedstock, which has further broaderned the utilization of sustainable resource and
allows 'green fuels' to be converted into 'green foods/materials'.
Prof. Mingxin was born on Oct. 1989. His B.Sc. thesis was fulfilled from Tsinghua University with Prof.
Yongge Wei and Prof. Lei Liu. He then finished his PhD at McGill University supervised by Prof. Chao-Jun Li. After
finishing his PhD he completed his postdoctoral study with Prof. Zetian Mi from the University of Michigan. He began
his independent career as a full professor at Lanzhou University by the end of 2020. His research interest is the
application of 'green' reagents in synthetic methodology and their application in Chemical Biology.