Chu Chun Kit John

  • Scholarship in 2011 at Colorado State University

John obtained his BSc in Chemistry at the University of Hong Kong with a first class honor. At the University of Hong Kong, he worked with Professor Pauline Chiu. Under the support of an overseas fellowship from HKU, he.spent a summer at the University of Waterloo, Canada, conducting research under the supervision of Professor J. Michael Chong. In the final year of undergraduate studies, he was a visiting student at the University of Cambridge, England. Besides learning in classroom, he worked with Professor Steven Ley for 10 weeks during his stay at Cambridge. As a Croucher scholar, he undertook Ph.D studies at Colorado State University under the supervision of Prof. Tomislav Rovis.

John's expertise is on the synthesis of nitrogen-containing organic molecules. He successfully developed an enantioselective zinc-catalyzed [4+2] cycloaddition for the synthesis of piperidine derivatives (J. Am. Chem. Soc.) and a protocol for targeting unactivated carbon-hydrogen bonds for carbon-carbon bond formation (Nature).

John's achievements have been recognized by a number of scholarships and fellowships, including the SMBC Global Foundation Asian Scholarship, the Rayson Huang Scholarship in Chemistry, the Dorothy Collins Memorial Scholarships, the HKU Foundation Entrance Scholarship, the HKU Worldwide Exchange Scholarship, M. P. Sweet Scholarship, an overseas research fellowship and a summer Research fellowship.

Currently

John will begin work as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Prof. Matthew Gaunt in March 2017.