Jiannan Zhao
Graphical Abstract
“I am waiting for the day when someone will discover the origin of homochirality in nature … A key experience in my education was a trip to Germany and attending the 65th Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting with ambitious young scientists from all natural science disciplines…” Find out more about Jiannan Zhao in his Introducing … Profile.
Jiannan Zhao
The author presented on this page has published his first article as a submitting corresponding author in Angewandte Chemie:
“Generation of Oxyphosphonium Ions by Photoredox/Cobaloxime Catalysis for Scalable Amide and Peptide Synthesis in Batch and Continuous Flow”: J. Su, J.-N. Mo, X. Chen, A. Umanzor, Z. Zhang, K. N. Houk, and J. Zhao, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2021, doi.org/10.1002/anie.202112668; Angew. Chem. 2021, doi.org/10.1002/ange.202112668.
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Position:
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Professor, Zhang Dayu School of Chemistry,
Dalian University of Technology (China)
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Homepage:
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ORCID:
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Education:
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2010 Bachelor degree, Sichuan University, Chengdu (China)
2015 PhD supervised by Xiaoming Feng, Sichuan University, Chengdu (China)
2015–2018 Postdoc with Ohyun Kwon, University of California, Los Angeles (USA)
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Research:
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Organic synthesis, photoredox catalysis, asymmetric catalysis
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Hobbies:
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Swimming, cycling, badminton, movies
I am waiting for the day when someone will discover the origin of homochirality in nature.
The greatest scientific advance of the last decade was the development of vaccines against COVID-19.
The most important future application of my research is OH activation for nucleophilic substitution avoiding reagents with poor atom economy.
I chose chemistry as a career because I had inspirational and encouraging chemistry teachers and supervisors throughout my education.
A key experience in my education was a trip to Germany and attending the 65th Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting with ambitious young scientists from all natural science disciplines.
In five years, I hope to be as humorous and easy-going as I am now.
I recharge my batteries by taking a nap followed by a cup of coffee.
If I were not a scientist, I would be an engineer or start my own business.
In a spare hour, I like to play the board game “Go” with my kids Johnny and Jeremy.
My biggest motivation is to explore something new.
My favorite time of day is walking with my wife in the morning while taking our kids to school.
I celebrate success by sharing the good news with my family and friends.
My favorite way to spend a holiday is going to the beach for a BBQ.
My favorite book is The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu.
My favorite saying is chem–is–try.
Behind the Science
This work was inspired by recent explorations in the chemistry of phosphine-derived radicals. I hypothesized that further single-electron oxidation of the phosphoranyl radical may enable deoxygenative substitution of carboxylic acids. Fortunately, Junqi and Jianan, my PhD students, shared my fascination and persistence for this project. After trying many oxidants without success, we decided to synthesize the cobaloxime catalyst, which turned out to solve the problem and pave the way for this study. Then we made concerted efforts to apply this strategy in peptide coupling.
