Shuo Wu, a PhD student who is under Prof. Paolo Melchiorre supervision, has successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “Developing and Exploiting New Photoreductants in Radical Chemistry” publicly on Friday, November 22nd.
The members of the evaluation committee were Prof. Dr. Núria López (ICIQ), Prof. Dr. Miquel Costas (Universitat de Girona) and Prof. Dr. Massimo Bietti (Universitá di Roma, Italy).
Shuo Wu comes from China and is currently studying photochemistry in the Melchiorre group at ICIQ. In his free time, he enjoys running and playing badminton.
He has received funding from the China Scholarship Council (CSC) to support his studies.
Why did you become a scientist?
I am always fascinated by science, in which I really enjoy the process of exploring new reactivities.
What do you want to achieve as a scientist?
To better understand and control radical species.
What is your thesis about?
It described our recent chemistry on developing and exploring strong photoreductants for new radical reactions.
What triggered your interest for the subject of your thesis?
Photocatalysis is a complementary method to traditional polar chemistry, constituting chemical molecules through invoking active radical under mild condition.
What applications can your thesis have in the future?
I hope these studies would contribute to the development of organic photoreductants for inert bond activation.
The thing that I like most about my thesis is….
The process of understanding the mechanisms of our photocatalyst and using them for interesting reactions.
From the lessons learnt (or skills developed) at ICIQ, which one do you value the most?
The presentation skills, I have improved it during my time at ICIQ.
What ICIQ moment you´ll never forget?
The moment when I got my thioether product, even though the yield was only 5%.
What do you wish you had known at the beginning of your PhD?
The PhD life would be full of “surprises”, just enjoy them.
What advice do you have for someone who’s starting their PhD now?
Be keen to understand unknown things.
Where are you going next? What will you do there?
I will be working as a postdoctoral researcher in USA
Chemistry/Science is fun because…
You can perform reactions to accomplish what you designed, or you can get what you never expected before.
If you were a piece of lab equipment, what would you be?
I would like to be NMR tubes.
