Rong Tong, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Virginia Tech, has been honored with Thieme Chemistry Journals Award. The Thieme Chemistry Journals Award is presented every year to up-and-coming researchers worldwide who are in the early stages of their independent academic career as assistant or junior professors. The awardees are selected exclusively by the editorial board members of SYNTHESIS, SYNLETT, and SYNFACTS who constantly watch out for promising, young individuals working in chemical synthesis and catalysis or closely related areas of organic chemistry.

Tong’s research is at the interface of chemistry, materials science, and biotechnology. His team aims to develop a scalable and concise synthetic strategy to prepare functionalized polyesters from amino acids through controlled living polymerization of O-carboxyanhydrides monomers and other cyclic monomers. Tong has developed a chemical synthesis method to prepare stereo-perfect, high-molecular-weight polyesters with various pendant functional groups, which potentially provides a practical approach to achieving a circular materials economy and addressing the grand challenge of polymer pollution.