Biography

Hai Dong was born in 1994 in Dong Nai, Vietnam. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Cincinnati, OH, in 2016 and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, MI, in 2021. Upon completion of his Ph.D. he moved to California Institute of Technology as a Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate.

Hai developed his interests in chemistry in high school studying chemistry with friends at the Le Hong Phong high school in Ho Chi Minh city. As an undergraduate researcher at the University of Cincinnati, he worked with Professor Hairong Guan to develop unique POCOP-type pincer nickel complexes and to characterize the synthesized complexes using spectroscopy.

At the University of Michigan, Hai worked under the tutelage of Professor Nicolai Lehnert to investigate the possible mechanistic pathways of the nitric oxide (NO) reduction to nitrous oxide by flavodiiron NO reductase (FNOR) using model complexes, spectroscopy, and computational chemistry.

In August 2021, Hai joined the Agapie-Peters research team led by Professor Theodor Agapie and Professor Jonas Peters as part of the Liquid Sunlight Alliance (LiSA) to develop novel molecular additives and materials that can improve selectivity and reactivity of copper catalyst surface towards C-C coupled products.

• Ph.D. in Chemistry, University of Michigan, USA, 2021

• B.S. in Chemistry - ACS Certified, University of Cincinnati, USA, 2016