Third-year chemistry undergraduate

David Tan

Synthetic chemistry, Photochemistry, and Chemistry Challenges mentoring

I am a Year 3 Chemistry undergrad at the University of Bristol with research interests in photochemistry, skeletal editing, and total synthesis. I have gained experience in synthetic methodology development through research in the Noble Group and am passionate about mentoring students for UKChO / C3L6.

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Academic Record

University of Bristol Chemistry BSc (Year 1: 80%, Year 2: 76%), The College of Richard Collyer A-level A*A*AA in Chemistry Mathematics, Biology and AS-Further Mathematics. 2023, 2024 UKChO Gold, 2023 C3L6 Rg award, was invited to the fully-funded Cambridge Residential Camp.

Lab Experience

Experience in synthetic chemistry through undergraduate laboratories and research projects. Worked on aerobic carbon-to-nitrogen skeletal editing of cyclic ketones and photoinduced olefin coupling using Hantzsch ester in the Noble Group, supported by an RSC Undergraduate Research Bursary.

Education and Mentoring

Over 300 hours of one-to-one online teaching experience in recent 2 years, mentoring students for UKChO (6 Golds & 3 Silvers) and Cambridge Chemistry Challenge (4 Golds and 2 Silvers). Supported 12 students, achieving a 100% medal success rate (Silver or above).

Selected work

Evidence of how I think, work, and explain chemistry.

Teaching

Do You Really Need to Enter Chemistry Competitions? — Some Advice for Students and Parents Chasing Awards

Some parents are understandably confused by this. “If we are willing to invest the time and pay for tutoring, why not just let our child give it a try?” My answer has always been fairly simple: Academic competitions are neither a rescue plan for university applications nor a shortcut to making an application look impressive. Continue reading →

Research

From an Unexpected Product to a New Direction

My project started from a reaction previously developed in our group. We wondered whether the same concept could be extended to cyclic ketones, using an amine to form an imine/enamine intermediate before promoting C–C bond cleavage and ultimately achieving skeletal editing of the ring. I therefore began by reacting a cyclic ketone with a controlled amount of amine under our proposed conditions. Continue reading →

Academic

How My Way of Running a Column Completely Changed

When I first started doing column chromatography, I had a very particular idea of what a “good column” should look like. I preferred to use a long and thin column, with dry loading, and I liked to run it by gravity. To be fair, the separation was usually pretty good. The problem was the time. A single column could easily take me an entire day, and sometimes even two days from packing, running, checking fractions and Continue reading →

Current interests

Building molecules through light, catalysts, and creative synthetic strategies.

Photoredox Catalysis and Radical Chemistry
Selective Catalysis and Reaction Development
C–C/C–N Skeletal Editing and Molecular Reconstruction
Total Synthesis of Natural Products and Retrosynthetic Design