Ying Yeung Yeung

"The ability to design elegant and economical synthesis routes is a major factor in the eventual viability and commercial success of a drug. In modern drug synthesis, an equally important target is to make only one hand of the mirror-image pair of molecules through asymmetric synthesis since in many cases one hand can be life-saving and the opposite hand can be fatal. Halogenation reaction, a well-developed and key organic transformation, plays a crucial role in pharmaceutical industry. However, the asymmetric variant of halogenation remains uncommon due to some inherent difficulties and it challenges chemists over the past 50 years. Yeung will present a simple solution to the asymmetric halogenation. In addition, he will demonstrate the utilities of this type of reaction in the preparation of many drug molecules."