University of California-Santa Barbara · ChemistryZhang Synthesis Lab
Liming Zhang · Santa Barbara, California
Research Focus
Dr. Liming Zhang's lab at UC Santa Barbara focuses on developing advanced chemical methods for synthesizing complex organic molecules, particularly in the areas of gold catalysis and carbohydrate chemistry. They are inventing new strategies to create compounds that may be valuable in biomedical research, like unnatural amino acids used in therapeutics. The lab aims to innovate ways to construct glycosidic bonds, which are important in sugar chemistry, and to apply these methods to produce biologically significant structures.
organic synthesisgold catalysiscarbohydrate chemistryasymmetric synthesisglycosylationbiomedical researchligand designbiomaterialspeptide therapeuticsunnatural amino acids
Research Aims
4AIM 01Advance enantioselective gold catalysis using new ligand designs.
AIM 02Expand bifunctional ligands for catalysis by other metals.
AIM 03Develop new methods for synthesizing challenging glycosidic linkages.
AIM 04Create biologically valuable structures using efficient gold catalysis.
Skills the Lab Values
gold catalysisSN2 glycosylationligand designorganic synthesis techniquesasymmetric synthesischiral ligand preparationreaction optimizationcharacterization techniquescollaborative research
Output against the department
Publications1,122top 3% of dept.6th of 216
this lab
most publishedleast published
Citations35ktop 11% of dept.24th of 216
this lab
most citedleast cited
Career totals from OpenAlex, compared against labs that share a department. A department spans everything from one paper to tens of thousands, so bar heights are on a log scale — otherwise the largest lab would flatten every other bar to a line.