Professor Tsuneo Imamoto

Professor Emeritus, Chiba University & Visiting Professor, Hokkaido University, Japan.

Professor Imamoto is a pioneer in the use of phosphine–boranes for the synthesis of chiral phosphine ligands. He designed and synthesized many new P-chiral phosphine ligands and demonstrated their superior performance in asymmetric catalysis. The air-stable P-chiral phosphine ligand QuinoxP* is widely used in both academia and industry. He also made significant contributions to the mechanistic studies of rhodium-catalyzed asymmetric hydrogenation in collaboration with Professor Ilya D. Gridnev. Another outstanding achievement is the development of cerium(III)-modified organometallic reagents, which have found widespread use in the efficient addition reactions of carbonyl compounds.

Professor Scott E. Denmark

Reynold C. Fuson Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U.S.A.

Professor Denmark has pioneered the concept of chiral Lewis base activation of Lewis acids for catalysis with Main Group elements. He has also developed palladium-catalyzed cross-couplings with organofunctional silicon compounds and mechanistic studies on the Suzuki-Miyaura cross coupling. In recent years, his group has investigated the use of chemoinformatics and machine learning to identify and optimize catalysts for enantioselective reactions. Earlier contributions include the development and application of tandem heterodiene cycloadditions for the synthesis of complex natural and unnatural nitrogen containing compounds. He maintains a longstanding interest in organosilicon, -phosphorus, and –lithium chemistry.

Professor Melanie S. Sanford

Department of Chemistry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, U.S.A.

Contributions: Developing transition metal catalyzed reactions for diverse organic transformations including C-H functionalization, arene fluorination and radiofluorination, and decarbonylative cross-coupling.

Professor Hirohisa Ohmiya

Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kanazawa University, Japan

Contributions: The development of novel reactions through system-oriented molecular catalysis, such as organo/metal hybrid catalysis and radical-mediated organocatalysis.

Professor Martin D. Burke

Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U.S.A.

Contributions: Pioneering the field of molecular prosthetics and the development of an automated Lego-like platform for democratizing small molecule synthesis.

Professor Shigeki Matsunaga

Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Hokkaido University, Japan

Contributions: The development of new chiral catalysts for atom- and step-economical organic reactions, such as enantioselective C-H functionalization and C-C bond formation via simple proton-transfer process.