Country of origin: New Zealand
Subject: Chemistry
Matriculation year: 2015
I was born in Hong Kong and raised in Auckland, New Zealand. As an undergraduate at the University of Auckland, I studied towards a double degree in Chemistry and Music, majoring in Medicinal Chemistry and Composition respectively. During this time, I completed my Honours project with Prof. Christian Hartinger, working on developing a new class of ruthenium organometallic complexes as anticancer agents.
After graduating with First Class Honours from the University of Auckland, I was fortunate to be an honorary recipient of the Krishnan-Ang studentship, allowing me to pursue my doctoral studies with Prof. Ian Paterson at Cambridge. My PhD research lies in the realms of organic chemistry, specifically in developing strategies to construct complex molecules in a concise and efficient manner. During the course of my PhD, I embarked on the total synthesis of several anticancer polyketide natural products, of which our synthetic efforts have resulted in the stereochemical reassignment of two so far. Our results help pave way for a sustainable supply of these precious entities, which can facilitate a better understanding of how these agents work in vivo, as well as enabling the focused design of novel therapeutics.
From late 2019, I will be taking up the Lindemann Postdoctoral Fellowship with Prof. Jin-Quan Yu at the Scripps Research Institute, working on developing catalytic and geometrically controlled C-H bond functionalisation reactions.