On 3rd of May, Prof. HOU Zhaomin from RIKEN of Japan was invited to “2018 High-end expert forum” of the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT), Chinese Academy of Sciences. Prof. Zhaomin Hou gave a seminar named as “Half-Sandwich Rare-Earth Alkyl Complexes: Versatile Catalysts for Organic Synthesis and Olefin Polymerization”, which was chaired by Prof. XIAN Mo.

During the seminar，Prof. HOU introduced the latest research achievements on rare-earth metal catalysis, including of “C-H Alkylation with alkenes”, “C-H Polyaddition to alkenes”, “Asymmetric C-H addition to alkenes”, “Dinitrogen activation and functionalization”, “C-C Bond cleavage and rearrangement of bezene” reactions catalyzed by Half-Sandwich Rare-Earth Alkyl Complexes and Mono-Cp-Ligated Titanium Hydride Clusters. Prof. HOU mentioned that scientific research must be novel or unique, must be “the only one” or “the best one”. After the seminar, the stuff and students from bio-based materials lab had a deep discussion with Prof. Hou, and benefited a lot.

（Text by LIU Yefei, Image by ZHANG Xiaowen）