SHANGHAI, May 13 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- WuXi AppTec (NYSE: WX), a leading pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device research and development outsourcing company with operations in China and the United States, is honored to have Prof. Eric N. Jacobsen, who is the Sheldon Emery Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, as a WuXi AppTec Science Seminar Series lecturer to share his experience and expertise with our company's scientists today. Prof. Jacobsen is a prominent figure in the field of organic chemistry and is best known for the development of the Jacobsen epoxidation.
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The WuXi AppTec Science Seminar Series is a monthly program that invites the world's top scientific minds and leaders in the pharmaceutical industry to speak with our company's scientists. The program aims to keep them informed about the latest developments in a broad range of topics in pharmaceutical research and development.
Prof. Jacobsen attended New York University and received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1986 before doing his postdoctoral studies with Barry Sharpless, the Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry, at MIT. Prof. Jacobsen has more than 200 research publications, patents, and book chapters, and over 40 worldwide awards and honors.
Prof. Jacobsen's work includes investigations on selective catalysis, including the design, discovery, and study of systems that mediate fundamentally interesting and useful organic reactions. His laboratory has applied physical-organic chemistry principles to understand the transition structure geometries and molecular recognition events that control reaction selectivity. Asymmetric catalysis, selective carbon-carbon bond formation and cleavage, enzymatic oxidation, enzyme mimetics, and new approaches to catalyst design are all areas of his interest. He has developed enantioselective small-molecule catalysts whose usefulness is demonstrated by aiding the synthesis of biologically important active compounds.
"I am delighted to visit WuXi AppTec's very impressive facilities. WuXi has developed a very strong reputation internationally in the organic chemistry community, and I admire their success," commented Professor Eric N. Jacobsen.
"I'm especially pleased to have Prof. Eric N. Jacobsen here in Shanghai to share his knowledge of organic synthesis," said Dr. Ge Li, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of WuXi AppTec. "WuXi AppTec is one of the largest employers of synthetic chemists in the world. We will apply the messages in his lecture to our efforts to produce bioactive molecules for the world's leading pharmaceutical companies."
