- Senior Research Fellowship in 2018 at University of Hong Kong
Prof Li Xuechen is Professor of Chemistry at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). He obtained his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Nankai University, MSc from University of Alberta and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2006. After that, he did a joint postdoctoral research at Columbia University and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (2007-2009). He joined the HKU Department of Chemistry as an Assistant Professor in 2009. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2014. Li was named Professor in 2018.
Currently
The research of Prof Li Xuechen lies in the
interface of synthetic chemistry, medicinal chemistry and biology, spanning
from innovative synthetic method development to biological studies and drug
discovery, with the ultimate aim to develop novel therapeutics. At HKU, he has
pioneered in the development of several innovative methods to synthesize and
modify biomolecules including peptides, proteins and glycans. These methods
open up new avenues for studying the biology and medicinal chemistry of
biomolecules and provide new possibilities to generate biologics with new
functional activities. His Ser/Thr Ligation was selected as the Cutting Edge of
Chemistry by Thompson Reuters (2013). One of the exciting and promising areas
for exploitation of these methods is to develop novel peptide-based antibiotic. Professor Li recently received the Contribution Award in Carbohydrate Chemistry from Chinese Chemical Society in 2023.