The Council

	President Professor Lu Yixin Professor Lu Yixin studied chemistry and received his B.Sc. from Fudan University and continued his graduate studies in Canada and obtained his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry under the supervision of George Just from McGill University in 2000. He then carried out his postdoctoral research with Peter W. Schiller at Clinical Research Institute of Montreal, and subsequently worked as an RCMS fellow with Ryoji Noyori at Nagoya University. In September 2003, He started his independent career and joined the National University of Singapore (NUS) where he is now a Professor. Currently, he is Head of Department of Chemistry. His research focuses on asymmetric catalysis and synthesis. His group has developed a wide range of organocatalysts that can be readily derived from natural amino acids, which have been commercialized by Tokyo Chemical Industry (TCI) Co. Ltd. and Daicel Chiral Technologies Co. Ltd. He is currently an Editorial Advisory Board member for Accounts of Chemical Research, a flagship journal published by the American Chemical Society. He also won numerous awards, including an NRF Investigatorship Award in 20118, among others.

	Vice President Professor Chen Xiaodong Professor Chen Xiaodong is a Distinguished University Professor at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, where he is a Professor in Materials Science and Engineering, with joint and courtesy appointments in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Chemistry, and Medicine. His research interests encompass mechanomaterials science and engineering, flexible electronics technology, surface and interface science, and carbon-negative technologies. So far, he has published more than 460 high-profiled papers and filed/applied more than 60 patents. Prof. Chen is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society (UK), the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Singapore National Academy of Science, and the Academy of Engineering Singapore. He serves on the editorial advisory boards of numerous esteemed international journals, including Advanced Materials, Matter, Chemical Reviews, CCS Chemistry, Small, and Nanoscale Horizons. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of ACS Nano, a globally recognized leading journal in nanoscience and nanotechnology.

	Hon Secretary Professor Chi Chunyan Professor Chunyan Chi received her PhD from the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in 2004. Afterward, she conducted her postdoctoral work at the University of California, Santa Barbara, from 2005 to 2007. She is currently a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and will serve as Vice-Dean (Graduate Studies), Faculty of Science in NUS from 1 Oct 2026. Her research interests include the synthesis of extended π-electron systems with novel structures, aromaticity, organic diradicaloids, dyes, and functional materials for organic electronics. She received the JSPS Invitational Fellowship for Research (2026), Asian Core Program Lectureship Awards from five countries, and the Singapore National Institute of Chemistry Distinguished Woman Chemist Award (2024). She is an Associate Editor of Organic Letters and serves on the advisory boards of several journals.

	Hon Asst Secretary Professor Zhao Yu Professor Zhao Yu obtained his B.S. in Chemistry at Peking University in 2002 where he carried out his undergraduate research with Prof. Limin Qi on Surface Chemistry. In the same year, he went abroad to Boston College and obtained his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry in 2008 under the guidance of Prof. Marc L. Snapper and Prof. Amir H. Hoveyda. After that, he had the honor of working with Nobel laureate Prof. Richard R. Schrock at MIT as a postdoctoral associate in the field of organometallic chemistry. In 2011, Yu was awarded the prestigious NRF fellowship from Singapore and joined Department of Chemistry at NUS as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor of chemistry in July 2017 and to full professor in January 2024. The research program in the Zhao group at NUS mainly focuses on the discovery and development of efficient catalytic methodology to promote sustainable chemical synthesis, and application to medicinal and material sciences. Yu has published >90 original research articles in his independent career, and his work has been recognized by numerous awards including Thieme Chemistry Journal Award in 2016 and Tokyo Chemical Industry-SNIC Industry Award in Synthetic Chemistry in 2018.

	Hon Treasurer Professor Lu Jiong Professor Lu Jiong currently holds the position of the Dean's Chair Professorship in NUS. He is also the Director of Chemical, Molecular, and Materials Analysis Centre since July 2021. Lu Jiong's research group at NUS has mainly focused on designing emergent atomic materials, quantum materials at atomically precise length scales to investigate their novel quantum properties and tackle contemporary challenges in quantum devices and sustainable chemical transformations. Specifically, they have focused on two key approaches: leveraging advanced atomic-scale characterization tools and artificial intelligence to develop emergent atomic quantum materials and novel catalytic materials with atomically precise active sites, aiming to overcome critical bottlenecks that hinder their practical applications.

	Hon Asst Treasurer Professor Duan Hongwei Professor Duan Hongwei is Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology (CCEB) of Nanyang Technological University. He also holds a joint appointment (by courtesy) at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine. He currently serves as the Acting Chair of CCEB. His research focuses on surface and interface engineering of colloidal systems, including living cells. His group takes advantage of molecular and biological functionalities to develop surface-enhanced plasmonic probes, bioactive nanostructures, colloidal assembly strategies, and genetic engineering and metabolic labeling of living bacteria for in vitro diagnostics, targeted delivery for biopharmaceutical therapeutics, and precision medicine.

	Council Member Dr Zhu Qiang Dr Zhu Qiang obtained his Ph.D. from the Department of Chemistry of National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2010. His Ph.D supervisor is Prof Lu Yixin at NUS. After graduation, he joined Albany Molecular Research Inc (AMRI, USA MNC) as a senior research scientist for 5 years, mainly working on contract research for various Pharm giants. In 2015, he joined The Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE, ASTAR) as a research scientist. Currently, he is the Department Head of Advanced Characterization and Instrumentation (ACI) and Head of Research Liaison Office (RLO) in IMRE, ASTAR. His research interests include phase change materials, functional polymers, and polymer nanocomposites. He has been researching chemical formulations for different industry partners in Buildings, Logistics, Machinery sectors, and others.

	Council Member Assoc. Professor Liu Xiaogang Dr. Liu Xiaogang is an Associate Professor at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Cambridge in 2014, and then was a SMART Scholar at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (2014–2017). In 2017, he joined the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) as an Assistant Professor, where he founded the Fluorescence Research Group and pioneered the development of high-performance fluorescent materials through fundamental studies of organic dye structure–property relationships. He was promoted to tenured Associate Professor in 2024 before moving to NTU in 2025 to establish the Photon Emission and Reactivity Lab (PEARL). Since 2022, Dr. Liu has been recognized annually among the world’s top 2% of scientists in the Stanford University–Elsevier BV global database. Dedicated to advancing chemical education, he has played a pivotal role in shaping Singapore’s chemistry community—serving as Vice-Chair of the Singapore Junior Chemistry Olympiad since 2019, Co-Chair of the Chemistry National Meeting Singapore in 2021, and leading a symposium at the Singapore International Chemistry Conference in 2024—fostering talent development, scientific exchange, and community engagement.

	Council Member Professor Koh Ming Joo Ming Joo (MJ) Koh was born and raised on the sunny island of Singapore. As a research assistant in Professor Philip Chan's group during his undergraduate years at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), MJ worked on a number of projects that employed gold-catalyzed alkene and alkyne cycloisomerization transformations to furnish architecturally distinct heterocyclic compounds. Upon graduating from NTU with a Bachelor of Science (First Class Honours) degree, MJ pursued his Ph.D. and post-doctoral studies under the tutelage of Professor Amir H. Hoveyda at Boston College, USA. In collaboration with Professor Richard R. Schrock's group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MJ's doctoral research mainly focused on developing catalytic stereoselective olefin metathesis protocols to access stereoisomerically pure alkenes for applications in natural product and pharmaceutical synthesis. As a post-doctoral fellow, MJ shifted his focus to developing catalytic stereoselective transformations involving organofluorine compounds. In June 2018, MJ was awarded the President's Assistant Professorship to commence his independent studies at the Chemistry Department of the National University of Singapore.

	Council Member Professor Zhao Yanli Professor Zhao Yanli is currently a professor at the School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is an elected Fellow of the Singapore National Academy of Science as well as the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Prof. Zhao’s group conducts research in an interdisciplinary area of synthetic chemistry, functional materials, and biomedical engineering with an emphasis on the design and synthesis of integrated systems for targeted bioimaging and therapy as well as green catalysis and sustainability. About 100 graduate students and research staff supervised by him have embarked upon academic careers worldwide.

	Co-op Council Member Dr Park Somin Dr Park Somin is an Assistant Professor and Presidential Young Professor at National University of Singapore (NUS). She received her MS in Chemistry and PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Kentucky in 2020 before completing Postdoc training at the University of Toronto and Northwestern University. Since joining NUS Chemistry in August 2024, her research group develops hybrid optoelectronic materials and investigates their structure-property relationships through chemical design with the goal of enabling next-generation clean energy and sustainability technologies. Somin is a recipient of Americal Chemical Society (ACS) Physical Chemistry Young Investigator Award (2023) and has been recognized in the same year as a Rising Star in Chemical Engineering by Stanford, as well as in Materials Science and Engineering by MIT, Stanford, and CMU.

	Co-op Council Member Dr Zhang Lili Dr. Lili Zhang is Division Director of the Emerging Technologies at ASTAR’s Institute of Sustainability for Chemicals, Energy and Environment (ISCE²) and an Adjunct professor in NTU. Lili received her B. Eng. and Ph.D. degree from Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2004 and 2011, respectively. Dr. Zhang expertise in carbon-based materials and functional materials for alternative feedstock to chemicals & fuels, waste upcycling, clean energy production, and energy storage and conversion. Lili is Global Highly Cited Researcher. Her research has led to more than 100 publications with more than 28,000 citations (H-index: 57). Lili received Outstanding Asian Researcher and Engineer Award, ASTAR Fellow, IES Sustainability Award.

All Current and Former Council Members click here.