Prof. Tieqiao Chen

Hainan University, China

Bio: Doctoral Supervisor at Hainan University. He serves on the Editorial Board of the SCI-indexed journals Int. J. Mol. Sci. and Chin. Chem. Lett., and as an Academic Editor for Heteroat. Chem. He also acts as a technical advisor and chief scientist for several enterprises.

In fundamental research, his work has long focused on the activation and transformation of carboxylic acids and their derivatives, as well as the green synthesis of organophosphorus compounds. He has made a series of innovative achievements in the synthesis and modification of functional molecules for pharmaceutical and materials applications. As first or corresponding author, he has published over 110 papers in prestigious international journals, including J. Am. Chem. Soc. (4 papers, including the first JACS paper from Hainan Province), Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. (2 papers), and Nat. Commun. (2 papers, one of which has been accepted in principle). His publications have received more than 4,600 citations, with an H-index of 38. He has led three projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, as well as multiple provincial, ministerial, and industry-collaborative projects.

In applied industrial research, he has led the development of over 10 generic drugs including vortioxetine, two of which have completed production validation. He is also in charge of the cost-reduction and efficiency-improvement project for loratadine active pharmaceutical ingredients, achieving annual savings of 4 million RMB. Moreover, he has developed a novel process that overcomes the long-standing “bottleneck” of relying on imports for the key intermediate methyl loratadine; this new process is now approaching the pilot-scale stage.

Title: Activation and transformation of amides

Abstract: Amides are ubiquitous in natural and synthetic molecules. Most crucially, amides constitute the main structural units of proteins and are fundamental to life processes. Amides are a critical class of pharmaceutical functional molecules; for example, the market for beta-lactam antibiotics alone is in the range of $20 billion annually, while more than 50% of drug candidates contain amide bonds. Furthermore, amides are common industrial chemicals and serve as building blocks for macromolecules such as nylon fibers. Therefore, studying the activation and transformation of amide bonds is of both fundamental importance and practical synthetic value for converting amides into advanced and fine chemicals as well as for late-stage modification of amide-containing drug molecules. 

Due to the resonance stabilization of the amide bond, amides are generally considered as inert electrophiles that typically react directly only with highly reactive nucleophiles such as M–H, metal hydrides. Currently, there are two main strategies for activating amide bonds: the first strategy is to introduce an aryl or acyl/sulfonyl electron-withdrawing groups, such as Boc (tert-butoxycarbonyl), Ts (p-toluenesulfonyl), N-glutaryl group onto the nitrogen atom of the amide, and then combine transition metals or base catalysis to achieve amide activation and bond interconversion. These studies have greatly advanced the development of amide bond interconversion, but these methods require the use of acylation reagents to synthesize activated amides beforehand, and the introduction of these activated groups reduces the atomic economy of this process. The second strategy is to use Tf2O (triflates) to react with the oxygen atom of the amide bond at low temperatures to generate active imidoyl triflate intermediates, which are then reacted with various nucleophiles to achieve amide activation and interconversion. However, this strategy is generally a two-step process, which is less convenient to operate, and mainly focuses on the conversion of secondary amides and tertiary amides containing a-hydrogen, while few studies on aromatic tertiary amides was reported. Herein, we share our recent work in this field such as transamidation and esterification of unactivated amides and the divergent alkynylative difunctionalization of amide bonds.

Prof. Xinyong Li

Dalian University of Technology, China

Bio: Professor at the School of Chemical Engineering, Environment and Life Sciences, Dalian University of Technology, Prof. Li research focuses on green catalysis, nano-catalysis, energy catalysis, and chemical & biological sensing. He has undertaken or participated in multiple national-level projects, including the National Key R&D Program, National High-Tech R&D Program (863 Program), National Key Basic Research Program (973 Program), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (major, general, and international cooperation projects).

His honors include the Second Prize of National Natural Science Award (2011), First Prize of Natural Science Award for Institutions of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education (2010), Supervisor of the Nomination Award for National Hundred Excellent Doctoral Dissertations (2013), and Supervisor of the Nomination Award for Liaoning Provincial Hundred Excellent Doctoral Dissertations (2012). He has been listed in Elsevier's China Highly Cited Researchers in Environmental Science for 10 consecutive years (2014-2023).

He has published over 290 SCI-indexed papers, with more than 16,800 Google Scholar citations and a Google Scholar H-index of 74. He has filed over 55 patents, 22 of which have been authorized, and delivered over 40 reports at international academic conferences in the fields of energy, environment and catalysis.

Title: Rational Design of Bionic Spinels-based  Nanocomposites toward Catalytic Conversion of Greenhouse Gases Sustainable Chemical Resource

Abstract: It is known that catalytic conversion of greenhouse gases including CH4  and carbon dioxide is of profound significance concerning the global energy and environmental issues. In this talk, various bionic spinels-based nanostructures with controlled fabrications and green conversions and solar harvesting and beyond are briefly reviewed,  and some of the our group recent achievements in the design of bionic spinels-based nanocomposites toward catalytic conversion of CH4 and carbon dioxide into sustainable chemical resource and beyond are accordingly summarized and discussed in terms of the tailored surficial and interfacial structures of the afore-mentioned bionic materials.