Tehshik Yoon

In particular, Yoon's group aims to leverage the ability of visible light–absorbing transition metal complexes to catalyze synthetic reactions. They investigate various mechanisms of photocatalytic activation, which differ from complex to complex depending on reactivity patterns of intermediates and their ability to be activated by sources of white light, including sunlight. Traditionally, chemists have used high-energy UV light to activate simple organic molecules, but Yoon's group focuses instead on expanding the application of visible light sources to synthesize increasingly complex target molecules. By providing strategies for activation of organic substrates that do not require specialized high-pressure UV photolysis apparatuses, these procedures are rendered more environmentally-friendly and widely available to synthetic and organic chemists.

Yoon has started his independent career in 2005 in the chemistry department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he has been ever since. His group specializes in studying the atomic level of control and molecular shape that can be manipulated by chemical synthesis. He has a research group that studies high energy and reactive molecules which convert into more stable molecules through chemical reactions. Such molecules include radicals and electronically organic triplets to more complex structures.

Yoon was born in Montreal, Quebec and grew up in Blacksburg, VA. As an undergraduate at Harvard University, he became fascinated by organic chemistry working in the laboratories of leading experts in contemporary asymmetric synthesis. Specifically, Yoon first experienced research in David A. Evans's lab studying stereocontrolled aldol reactions. After earning his A.B. in chemistry from Harvard in 1996, he proceeded to earn his M.S. under the guidance of Erick M. Carreira, who introduced Yoon to synthesis of complex natural products through applied photochemistry. Yoon was then accepted as Dave MacMillan's first graduate student, initially at UC Berkeley and later at Caltech, where he earned his Ph.D. investigating methods to control the stereochemistry of pericyclic reactions. He returned to Harvard in 2002 as a postdoc to research the use of hydrogen bonding urea catalysts in asymmetric synthesis in the laboratory of Eric Jacobsen.

Tehshik Peter Yoon (born 20 June 1975) is a Canadian-born chemist who studies the new reaction methods for organic synthesis with the use of a catalysis. Yoon currently is a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the chemistry department. For his contributions to science, he has received numerous awards including the Beckman Young Investigator Award and National Science Foundation CAREER Award.