Liming Zhang

Assistant Professor

Contacts

1631E PSB North
UC Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9510

tel: (805) 893-7392
fax: (805) 893-4120
zhang@chem.ucsb.edu

Personal web site

Research Description

The research group is mainly interested in developing practically useful and novel synthetic methods based on a range of powerful catalytic platforms/systems. The goal is to streamline synthetic transformations and offer unprecedented efficiency in accessing a large array of functional structures. Application of these novel synthetic methods as key transformations in total synthesis of reasonably complicated natural products is a vital research component and serve to test these methods in demanding scenarios and offer new avenues to study their biological/medicinal properties via analog synthesis.

Gold and platinum catalysis are the current focus of the group. The combination of gold/platinum catalysis with other metal catalysis and/or organocatalysis to render powerful tandem/sequential transformations will be the next stage of the group research effort.

Research Groups

• UCSB chemistry

Biography

Liming Zhang joined the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UC Santa Barbara in July, 2009. He received his Ph. D. degree from the University of Michigan working with Professor Masato Koreeda, and then spent one and a half years as a postdotoral fellow in Kozmin group at the University of Chicago. He started his independent career at the University of Nevada, Reno in 2005 as an assistant professor. Before his Ph. D., he received his B. S. degree from Nanchang University and his M. S. degree in organic chemistry from Nankai University. He also obtained a second M. S. degree in organic chemistry from the University of Alabama under the guidance of Professor Michael P. Cava.

Awards/Honors

• Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, 2009
• Amgen Young Investigator Award, 2008
• NSF CAREER, 2008
• Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award, 2007
• Thieme Journal Award, 2007

Selected Publications