Chao-Jun Li


Chao-Jun "C.J." Li is a professor of chemistry at McGill University, Montréal. He works on organic transformation applied to Green chemistry, including C-H activation, reactions in water and photochemistry.

Education

C.J. Li was born in 1963, and got his BSc from Zhengzhou university, and completed his MSc. in organic synthesis at the Chinese Academy of Sciences with Prof. T.H. Chan. He then moved to McGill University to do his PhD with Prof. Chan again, along with Prof. David Harpp, and went on a NSERC-funded postdoc with Prof. Barry Trost at Stanford University in the United States.

Career and research

C.J. Li started as an assistant professor at Tulane University in 1994, at attained the title of Professor of Chemistry in 2000. He then moved in 2003 to McGill University, where he obtained a Canada Research Chair in Green Chemistry. He has also been the director of NSERC CREATE for Green Chemistry, the director of CFI Infrastructure for Green Chemistry and Green Chemicals and has been the co-director of the :fr:Fonds_québécois_de_la_recherche_sur_la_nature_et_les_technologies|FQRNT Center for Green Chemistry and Catalysis since 2009.
C.J. Li's research encompasses various aspects of green chemistry applied to organic chemistry: organometallics, catalysis. Most notably, he is known for using water as a reaction media for various chemical reactions Li originated the concepts of Aldehyde-Alkyne-Amine Coupling and the Cross-Dehydrogenative Coupling. His work on GaN nanowires as photocatalysts for the conversion of methane into benzene was covered by Phys.org in 2015, leaving propects for hydrogen storage. Subsequently, his team showed that they were also able to convert methanol into ethanol. He also made breakthroughs in using hydrazones as nucleophiles in cross-coupling, and on the direct amination of phenol derivatives.

Selected publications

Reactions in water:
A3 coupling reaction
Cross-Dehydrogenative Coupling
GaN photocatalysts
Hydrazones as coupling agents: