From basic ingredients—simple chemical components that are widely available—Song Lin, the Howard Milstein Faculty Fellow and assistant professor in the department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, finds ways to generate complex organic molecules for use in medicine and industry. According to this Cornell Research profile, Lin began experimenting with electrochemistry in 2016.
“With chemistry, you usually think of mixing reagents in a flask and then heating it up to drive the reaction,” Lin says in the piece. “Electrochemistry is different. Instead of using heat, you plug electrodes in a flask and use electricity to power the reaction. Organic chemists have been using electrochemistry for a long time, but it really hasn’t entered into the mainstream for organic synthesis.”
