Peter Li was born in 2002 in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry at the University of Antwerp in 2023. For his Bachelor’s thesis, he worked on the selective chlorination of (hetero)aromatics using a heterogeneous photocatalyst under the supervision of Professor Shoubhik Das.
He then continued to complete his Master’s degree, centered on organic chemistry at the University of Antwerp in September 2025. In his first master’s year, Peter undertook an industrial internship at Ajinomoto Bio-Pharma Services, investigating the optimization and performance comparison of a prototype light engine for pharmaceutically relevant photo-flow reactions. Thereafter, he conducted his master’s thesis (via an Erasmus internship) in the Opatz Lab at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. Here, under the co-supervision of Professor Bert U.W. Maes and Professor Till Opatz, he focused on the synthesis of metal-free helically chiral photocatalysts of the azahelicene type.
In May 2026, He joined the lab of Professor Dmitry Katayev at the University of Bern to pursue his PhD, striving for the development of novel mechanochemical strategies/ methodologies in search of more sustainable organic synthesis.
