Yi Tang receives prestigious international award

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Prof Yi Tang

Professor Yi Tang has been selected as the recipient of the Mr and Mrs Sun Chan Memorial Award in Organic Chemistry. 

Established in 1998 by Sunney Chan, then director of the Institute of Chemistry of Academia Sinica in Taiwan, the award recognizes young organic chemists of Chinese descent.

Tang will be an awardee presenter on the first day of the three day 14th International Symposium for Chinese Organic Chemists (ISCOC) and the 11th International Symposium for Chinese Inorganic Chemists (ISCIC) biennial symposium which will take place December 8-10, 2016 in Singapore.  At the symposia Chinese chemists from around the world gather to “exchange their scientific findings, cultivate mutual understandings, and foster possible collaborations”. 

Professor Yi Tang

Tang received his undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering and Material Science from Penn State University. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from California Institute of Technology under the guidance of Prof. David A. Tirrell. After NIH postdoctoral training in Chemical Biology from Prof. Chaitan Khosla at Stanford University, he started his independent career at University of California Los Angeles in 2004. He is currently the Chancellor Professor at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UCLA, and holds joint appointments in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; and Department of Bioengineering. His lab is interested in identifying new enzymes from the biosynthetic pathways of polyketides, nonribosomal peptides, terpenoids, alkaloids and hybrid compounds. His group has mined numerous cryptic natural products from fungal species, including potential immunosuppressant polyketides from pathogenic fungi. His group is also interested in combining enzyme discovery and protein engineering towards the green synthesis of important pharmaceuticals. They demonstrated the potential of this approach by establishing a biocatalytic approach for making the blockbuster drug simvastatin.

His recent awards include the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Allan P. Colburn Award (2009), the Young Investigator Award from the Society of Industrial Microbiology (2010), the American Chemical Society (ACS) Biochemical Technology Division (BIOT) Young Investigator Award (2011), the ACS Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (2012), the EPA Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award (2012), NIH DP1 Director Pioneer Award (2012) and the ACS Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry (2014).

To learn more about Tang’s research visit is group’s website.