yi-lin wu

Yi-Lin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Chemistry at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU), where he leads research on functional organic materials and bioorthogonal chemistry. His work focuses on supramolecular photo-induced processes involving triplet excited states for substrate activation and light emission, as well as developing bioorthogonal reactions for multiplex cell surface protein labeling.

Prior to joining NYCU in 2025, Yi-Lin was a Senior Lecturer in Materials Chemistry at Cardiff University (2019–2024), where he established a dynamic research program at the intersection of synthetic chemistry and materials science, and was recognized as a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2022. His earlier academic career included positions as Research Associate Professor (2017–2019) and Research Assistant Professor (2014–2017) at Northwestern University, where he worked with Professor Michael Wasielewski on self-assembled nanostructures and excited-state dynamics in materials relevant to biology and photovoltaics.

Yi-Lin received his Ph.D. (2012) and M.Sc. (2008) from ETH Zürich under the supervision of Professor François Diederich, focusing on physical organic chemistry including mechanistic studies of click-type syntheses and photoswitchable systems. His graduate work was recognized with the Excellence Scholarship of ETH Zürich, Novartis M.Sc. Fellowship, and the Scholarship Fund of the Swiss Chemical Industry. He completed his undergraduate studies with a B.S. in Chemistry from National Taiwan University (2005) and held a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) Fellowship for his postdoctoral research at Northwestern University.

His research integrates synthetic, spectroscopic, computational (including informatic) techniques to develop new materials and methodologies with applications spanning from biological systems to advanced photoinduced reactions.

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