Jin-Quan Yu, the Bristol Myers Squibb Endowed Chair in Chemistry and the Frank and Bertha Hupp Professor of Chemistry at Scripps Research, has been selected as the recipient of the 5th Akira Suzuki Award. Established in 2021 to commemorate Akira Suzuki’s 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and to celebrate his 90th birthday, the award recognizes outstanding contributions to the discovery and development of chemical reactions, with a focus on experimental chemistry.

Yu is being recognized for his pioneering work on a powerful technique in synthetic chemistry known as carbon-hydrogen (C-H) bond activation. C-H bonds are among the most common in organic molecules, but they’re also strong and typically unreactive, which makes them difficult to work with. Yu developed ways to selectively break and modify these stubborn bonds, making it far easier for chemists to build complex molecules—a breakthrough that’s accelerating the development of pharmaceuticals, molecular tools and other chemical compounds used in research and industry.

The award, sponsored by Tosoh Corporation and the Institute for Chemical Reaction Design and Discovery (ICReDD) at Hokkaido University, includes a medal, a $10,000 prize and an invitation to deliver an award lecture at the 9th ICReDD International Symposium held in October 2025 in Sapporo, Japan.