Rate My Professor Mimi Hii

Professor Mimi Hii is Professor of Catalysis in the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Natural Sciences, at Imperial College London. She obtained her BSc in Chemistry with First Class Honours and PhD in Chemistry from the University of Leeds in 1991 and 1994, respectively, under the supervision of Professor B. L. Shaw. Following postdoctoral research at the Dyson Perrins Laboratory, University of Oxford, with Dr. John M. Brown from 1994 to 1997, and fellowships including Keeley Junior Research Fellow at Wadham College, Oxford, and Ramsay Memorial Research Fellow at Leeds, she began her independent academic career as Lecturer in Organic Chemistry at King’s College London from 1998 to 2003. In 2003, she joined Imperial College London as Senior Lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry, was promoted to Reader in Catalysis in 2009, and to Professor of Catalysis in 2016. She serves as Director of the Centre for Rapid Online Analysis of Reactions (ROAR) since 2018 and Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Next Generation Synthesis and Reaction Technology (rEaCt) since 2019. Additionally, she founded the Dial-a-Molecule Grand Challenge Network and participates in the Pharmacat Consortium.

Professor Hii’s research focuses on catalysis, particularly homogeneous catalysis for C-C and C-X bond formations relevant to pharmaceutical and fine chemical industries, flow chemistry, multiphasic reactions, and data-rich synthesis using high-throughput experimentation with online and inline analytics in batch or flow reactors. Her group works on sustainable and scalable biocatalysis in continuous flow, photocatalytic C-C couplings, and automated self-optimized reactors. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers with an h-index of 35 and filed 8 patent applications. Key contributions include leading the £4.7 million ROAR facility, supported by £2.7 million from EPSRC, to enhance predictability and reproducibility in synthetic chemistry. Honors include the Asian Rising Star Award from the Federation of Asian Chemical Societies in 2013. She has served as Editor-in-Chief of Springer Nature’s Chemistry Central Journal (2015-2018) and Associate Editor for ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering (2019-).