Associate Professor of Chemistry
Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University
Haidian, Beijing 100084, China
Email: sgzhang@tsinghua.edu.cn
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-0931-321X
Departmental website (English): https://www.chem.tsinghua.edu.cn/chemen/info/1085/1977.htm
Fields of Interest
Organometallic chemistry, main-group element chemistry, organic synthesis, molecular catalysis
Biography for Prof. Dr. Shaoguang Zhang
Shaoguang Zhang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Tsinghua University. He leads a research group that develops transition-metal/main-group (M–E) bonded platforms and elucidates M–E cooperative activation pathways that unlock challenging bond activations and tunable catalysis. His lab targets transformations of small, abundant molecules, including unactivated alkanes, biomass-derived oxygenated organics, CO2 and N2, by coupling molecular design with mechanistic analysis.
His research leverages macrocyclic ligand architectures, metalloligands, multimetallic clusters, and multi-center main-group ambiphiles to access reactive yet controllable intermediates and to enable diverse, switchable element-centered bond-activation pathways. By integrating advanced spectroscopy, single-crystal X-ray diffraction, and computation, his group establishes structure–reactivity relationships and clarifies bond activation mechanisms, including pathways that couple functional-group transformation with electron transfer. A parallel goal is to translate these mechanistic principles into enzyme-mimicking catalytic reactions whose reactivity and selectivity can be tuned through element-centered modulation.
He earned his Ph.D. from Peking University in 2013 under the mentorship of Prof. Zhenfeng Xi and Prof. Wen-Xiong Zhang. Prior to joining Tsinghua in 2020, he conducted postdoctoral research at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory with Dr. R. Morris Bullock and at the University of Pennsylvania with Prof. Neil C. Tomson, and later served as a Senior Research Scientist at Merck & Co., Inc. He has published more than 55 papers in leading journals such as J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem., Acc. Chem. Res., ACS Catalysis. His work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the 2023 National Natural Science Award (Second Prize), 2025 Asian Core Program Lectureship Award (Korea), and several teaching and research excellence honors at Tsinghua.
Outside the lab, he enjoys traveling, hiking, and exploring local food cultures.
Highlighted Honors and Awards (20 Total)
2025 Asian Core Program Lectureship Award (Korea)
2025 Tsinghua University Teaching Achievement Award (1st Prize)
2024 Tsinghua University Annual Teaching Excellence Award
2024 Young Teachers' Teaching Competition (1st Prize)
2023 National Natural Science Award (2nd Prize, 4th Contributor)
2023 Outstanding Supervisor of Student Research Training (1st Prize)
2015 CIBA/YCC Young Scientist Travel Award, ACS Younger Chemists Committee
2015 Outstanding Performance Award, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
2013 Reaxys PhD Prize (Finalist), Reed Elsevier Properties SA
2013 Excellent Doctoral Dissertation, Peking University
2012 National Scholarship for Graduate Student, Ministry of Education, China
2011 Principal’s Scholarship, Peking University
Selected Presentations
1. Dec. 17, 2026 12th Asian Biological Inorganic Chemistry (AsBIC12)
Jaipur, India (Invited Lecture)
2. Sept. 19, 2026 Conference on Coordination Chemistry in Kyoto (CCC-Kyoto)
Kyoto, Japan (Invited Lecture)
3. Jun. 28, 2026 46th International Conference on Coordination Chemistry (ICCC-46)
Odense, Denmark (Invited Lecture)
4. Nov. 28, 2025 18th International Conference on Cutting-Edge Organic Chemistry in Asia (ICCEOCA-18)
Sanya, China (Poster, ACP Lectureship Award to Korea)
5. Sept. 8, 2025 1st Main-Group Element Reactivity Conference
Namur, Belgium (Poster)
6. Sept. 4, 2025 6th International Symposium on Synthesis and Catalysis
Coimbra, Portugal (Selected Oral Presentation and Poster)
7. Jul. 29, 2025 Tsinghua-Göttingen Joint Chemistry Symposium
Göttingen, Germany (Invited Lecture)
8. Mar. 23, 2025 2025 Asian Polyolefin Workshop
Chengdu, China (Invited Lecture)
9. Nov. 13, 2023 24th International Conference on Phosphorus Chemistry
Ningbo, China (Invited Lecture)
10. Jun. 16, 2020 24th ACS Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference
Online (due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Invited Lecture)
11. Jul. 10, 2019 Gordon Research Conferences/Seminar on Organometallic Chemistry
Newport RI, USA (Poster)