Prof. Jin-Pei Cheng （程津培 教授） was born in 1948 in Tianjin, China. He received M.Sc. from Nankai University in 1981 and Ph.D from Northwestern University (Evanston, III. USA) in 1987 with Prof. Fred. G. Bordwell, the founder of the comprehensive pKa scales in DMSO. Then, he worked as postdoc at Duke University with Prof. Edward M. Arnett.
Cheng started his academic career at Nankai University in 1988 as an associate professor. In 1990, he was promoted to full professor. He served as vice-president of Nankai University during 1995-2000. From 2000 to 2008, he was Vice Minister (basic research) of Science and Technology of China (while with moderate research remaining). He is adjunct professors of Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (since 2002), Utah State University (since 2007) and National Defence S&T University (since 2011). In 2012, he joined in Tsinghua University as a full-time professor and serves as director of the Centre of Basic Molecular Science (CBMS).
In 2001, Cheng was elected the Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). In the same year, he was voted by the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) to be a Member. Cheng has been a fellow of Royal Chemical Society of UK since 2007 and is the board member of the Academy Presidium of the CAS.
Prof Cheng has been a contributor of the CRC Handbook of Physics and Chemistry since 2012, in charge of Bond Dissociation Energy, together with Prof. Yuran Luo.
Cheng’s research focuses mainly on the measurement and quantitative understanding of bond energies in chemical transformations. More recently, his research is extended to the physical organic chemistry in ionic liquids and in chiral organocatalysis. He has co-authored over 200 papers in peer reviewed journals. His main contributions are reflected by the follows.
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Methodologies to determine homolytic and heterolytic bond dissociation energies of organic molecules and reactive intermediates in molecular and ionic solvents
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Establishment of various bond energetic scales
- Reaction mechanisms, Nitric oxide chemistry, Hydride affinity in solution, etc.