The Centre for Advanced Technology at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and the City of Poznań would like to invite you to an open lecture by Prof. Chao-Jun Li titled: "Our Future Challenges in Chemical Syntheses". The lecture will take place on May 9, 2023 at. 10:00 at the Centre for Advanced Technology, room D/111-4-6 (1st floor), ul. Uniwersytetu Poznańskiego 10.
Prof. Chao-Jun Li received his bachelor's degree from Zhengzhou University (1983), his master's degree from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing (1989) and his doctorate (Maxima cum laude) from McGill University in Montreal, Canada (1992) under the guidance of T.H. Chan and D.N. Harpp. Prof. Li then spent two years (1992-1994) as a postdoctoral trainee in the laboratory of Barry M. Trost at Stanford University (USA), after which he took up a position as an assistant professor at Tulane University (USA). He was promoted to associate professor in 1998 and to full professor at this university in 2000. In 2003, he was hired for the position of Canada Research Chair (Tier I) in Green Chemistry and Professor of Chemistry at McGill University in Canada. He has been an honorary professor at the Institute of Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences since 1996 and a visiting professor at the University of Science and Technology of China (2001). He was a visiting professor (at the University of California, Berkeley (2002), as well as director of the NSERC CREATE for Green Chemistry (2012-2018), director of the CFI Infrastructure for Green Chemistry and Green Chemicals (2008-2018) and co-director of the FQRNT Center for Green Chemistry and Catalysis (since 2009). Li serves as an editor at Chemical Communications (since 2020) and Green Chemistry (2005-) and holds functions on advisory boards of such prestigious journals as ACS Catalysis (since 2021), Advanced Sustainable Systems (Wiley, 2021-), Chemical Society Reviews (2016-), Chemical Science (2010-).
His current research interests focus on finding new reactions that can radically shorten synthesis steps, easily convert natural compounds and gases (CO2 and methane) into valuable products, so-called fine chemicals. He is searching for compounds that enable the accumulation of sunlight and also uses photo-energy for chemical synthesis.
Prof. Li has an impressive number of publications - over 500 articles, 8 books, and 14 patents. His work has been cited over 51,000 times and his current Hirsch index is 109. Prof. Li has given around 500 plenary and guest lectures at international conferences and research institutions around the world. Li has received many international and prestigious awards including the Chemical Institute of Canada Medal (2022), Humboldt Research Award (2021), Killiam Research Fellow (2018), Claritive Analytics recognised him as one of the most cited scientists in the world (2017), he was also elected as a member of the European Academy of Sciences (2020) and the Chinese Chemical Society (2020).