Wolfson Alum announces £1m fund to support doctoral Chemistry research

Dr Yingjian Andy Xu (MCR 2007-) and his chemical materials company GoldenKeys, alongside the Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford recently announced the XuPHOS Oxford Fund, which will provide over £1million to support a minimum of eight DPhil studentships in the coming decade.

Doctoral students in receipt of these studentships will also have the opportunity to travel and gain industry experience at the GoldenKeys headquarters in Guizhou, China.

Dr Xu says, “This fund aims to support PhD training for the next decade, enabling groundbreaking work and serving for humanity. Just as I benefitted from departmental and industry support nearly twenty years ago, I want others to have the same opportunities. It will train talents for academic excellent and prepare them for impactful careers in industry, bridging the gap between cutting-edge research and real-world applications.”

Dr Xu was a postdoctoral research fellow at Oxford from 2005–2008, when he conducted research into homogeneous precious metal catalysts and organometallic cluster materials. Today, he leads GoldenKeys High-Tech Materials Co. Ltd., which has developed several hundred commercial products including heterogeneous catalysts and solid functional materials serving for a number of industrial sectors.