Professor SU Weiping from Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) visited Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics (LICP) of the CAS on August 15. During his visit, he gave a lecture entitled New transition metal catalyzed organic cross-coupling reactions.

As a convenient and environmental friendly organic synthesis route, selective C-H bond functionalization reactions have attracted more and more attention, and have a great potential in pharmaceutical chemistry, natural products, syntheses and preparation of organic functional materials. In his lecture, Professor SU introduced his group’s work on the development of transition-metal catalyzed C-H bond functionalization and decarboxyative cross-coupling reactions: 1) realizing the direct C-H bond arylation of thiophene and polyfluoroarenes using arene carboxylic acids as arylating reagent, which show good functional group compatibility, and provide an atom-economical and efficient route for biaryl synthesis; 2) achieving a selective formylation and acylation of free (N-H) indoles under mild condition, which overcomes the drawback of harsh conditions in traditional formylation and acylation reactions, and will find application in modifications of complexity compound owing to its good functional group compatibility, etc.

Professor SU Weiping received his bachelor’s degree from Hefei Normal University (formerly known as Anhui College of Education) in 1987 and doctoral degree in 1999 from Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter. He then did postdoctoral research in Harvard University (2000-2001), Rutgers University (2001-2002) and Iowa State University (2002-2005). In 2005 he joined Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter. In 2009 he received support from National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars. He has published more than 80 papers in J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., etc.