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Assistant Professor of Chemistry Kian L. Tan has been named a 2011 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. This highly competitive award recognizes early-career scientists whose work shows outstanding promise and provides financial support for fundamental research.
The Tan research group works on a reaction known as hydroformylation, an important process used to make commodity chemicals (current worldwide production is approximately 9 million tons per year). The Tan group has developed a novel catalyst that diverts the reaction to form organic compounds that were previously not accessible via hydroformylation. This breakthrough raises the possibility of applying hydroformylation in other chemical sectors such as fine and pharmaceutical chemical synthesis.
Tan came to Boston College in 2006 after earning his PhD at the University of California Berkeley. He received a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2004.