Outstanding Young Researcher Award 2024

 

 

Professor Huang received his BS degree from Peking University in 2012 and his PhD from the University of Chicago in 2017. He joined the University of Hong Kong in 2019, where he is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry as well as a member of the State Key Laboratory of Synthetic Chemistry.

Unlocking the synthetic routes from active methylene compounds – a category of chemical feedstocks with an annual production of over 10,000 tons – to assorted chiral bioactive molecules of high value, including medicines and agrochemicals, is the focus of Professor Huang’s research. His laboratory specialises in designing novel catalyst structures and reaction paradigms to enable unprecedented asymmetric transformations and stereochemical controls. Professor Huang’s contributions and innovations, which have been published in top journals such as Nature Chemistry, Nature Communications, Science, and Journal of the American Chemical Society, have been highly recognised by the field. Over the past five years, he has received the Chinese Chemical Society Prize for Young Scientists in 2023, the Excellent Young Scientists Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Hong Kong and Macau) in 2021, and HKU’s Research Output Prize in 2022.

Professor Huang believes that the passion and imagination of chemists will continue to be a key driving force for evolving the field. He is also extremely grateful for all the support received from the Department and Faculty for his lab to establish and grow resiliently during the past five years of turbulence in Hong Kong.