On May 19, Prof. Michelle L. Coote, a member of the Australian Academy of Sciences, was invited by the State Key Laboratory of Elemento-organic Chemistry to give a lecture entitled "Catalyzing reactions with electric fields" to the faculty and students of Nankai Organic Chemistry. Prof. Coote gave an online lecture entitled "Catalyzing reactions with electric fields". The meeting was chaired by Prof. Qian Peng.
Before the lecture, Prof. Chunming Cui, Director of the SKLEOC, expressed his sincere thanks to Prof. Michelle L. Coote for accepting the invitation despite of her busy schedule and briefly introduced the background and purpose of the Nankai Lectureship on Organic Chemistry. The Nankai Lectureship on Organic Chemistry is a series of lectures established by the State Key Laboratory of Elemento-organic Chemistry, aiming to create a good academic atmosphere for research in the key laboratory. The lecturers are given by currently active chemists who have made outstanding contributions to organic chemistry all over the world.
In the presentation, Prof. Coote focused on their contributions to the field of physical organics in terms of electrochemical and electrostatic catalytic regulatory mechanisms in organic reactions. Since most chemicals, including transition states are polarizable, the application of an external electric field can be used to modulate catalytic reactions. Professor Coote's presentation was very insightful and informative, and she explored the mechanism of the relevant transformations by adding charged functional groups to the appropriate positions and thus introducing internal electric fields to orientate the direction of the local field at the reaction center. At the end of the presentation, Prof. Coote also had an in-depth communication with students and faculty members about the problems in their research.
Professor Michelle Coote received her PhD in polymer chemistry from the University of New South Wales in 2000, followed by postdoctoral research at Durham University and the Australian National University in the UK. Professor Michelle Coote focuses on theoretical and experimental design of new synthetic methods and catalysts for bond activation in non-traditional methods such as photochemistry and electrochemistry. She is the Executive Editor of JACS, winner of Georgina Sweet ARC, Pople Medalist (2015), and the RACI Leighton Memorial Medal (2021).
