Congratulations to Yi-Fan on receiving Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award from both Tsinghua University and Tsinghua Xuetang Talent Program.

Tsinghua University Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award is a prestigious honor that celebrates the top bachelor’s theses across all disciplines at Tsinghua, recognizing originality, scholarly impact, and research rigor. It represents the university’s highest commendation for undergraduate research.

Tsinghua Xuetang Talent Program was founded in 2009, aimed at cultivating talented undergraduate student into outstanding scholars in basic sciences. The Tsinghua Xuetang Talent Program, Class of Chemistry offered opportunity for its students to do undergraduate researches, and offers Outstanding Thesis Award for selected students every year.

During his undergraduate research training in the group, Yi-Fan Tan demonstrated exceptional performance. His work exhibited remarkable innovation, experimental mastery, and profound theoretical insight, setting a high standard of scholarly excellence for undergraduate research.

In his award-winning thesis, titled “Transition Metal-Olefin Ligand Cooperative Catalysis,” Yi-Fan made significant contributions to the field. By rationally designing novel cooperative olefin ligands, he successfully developed a Catellani-type reaction utilizing a six-membered palladacycle intermediate. This breakthrough enabled methylation at the 4-position of a 5,6-fused ring system, opening new avenues for late-stage methylation and deuteromethylation of 5,6-fused rings. This work opens a new way for late-stage methylation and deuteromethylation of 5,6-fuzed rings, which have potential applications in pharmaceutical synthesis.