Jiajun WU laureate of the SCF Bretagne-Pays de Loire 2023 PhD Prize

Jiajun WU is the laureate of the Bretagne-Pays de Loire -French Chemical Society 2023 PhD prize. This prize rewards the excellence of the research work accomplished by a PhD student in organometallic catalysis. Jiajun Wu conducted these research projects in the framework of the federation INCREASE.

Jiajun WU received his Bachelor’s degree in 2016 from Fujian Normal University under the supervision of Prof. Qiufeng Huang, and he moved to Xiamen University where he worked with Prof. Hui-Jun Zhang and obtained his master degree in 2019. He then joined the Rennes Institute of Chemical Sciences (OMC / Sustainable Catalysis group) in order to complete his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Christophe Darcel, thanks to a fellowship from the China Scholarship Council (CSC). He has successfully defended his PhD in November 2022. His research focuses on homogeneous iron catalysed hydrosilylation and transfer hydrogenation reactions.

During his PhD, he was interested in 2 main areas of research involving well defined iron catalysts: (i) the reduction via hydrosilylation of nitroarenes and carboxylic derivatives and (ii) the reduction via hydrogen transfer and hydrogen borrowing of nitroarenes (notably involving cascade transformation), thus leading to imines, primary amines, heterocycles and cyclic amines. He also notably succeeded to perform selective N-alkylation of indoles in a two-step sequence and the post-functionalization of organophosphorus derivatives by alkylation starting from alcohols via a hydrogen borrowing pathway. Such results led to 10 publications.

Notably these researches were conducted in the framework of Increase.

Jiajun is now doing a post-doctorate in the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany.

Contacts

Jiajun Wu
wujiajun_c@163.com

Christophe Darcel, Univ. Rennes, ISCR-CNRS 6226, F-35000, Rennes, France
christophe.darcel@univ-rennes.fr