Academic bio

Born in Hong Kong and raised in Auckland New Zealand, Nelson completed his undergraduate education at the University of Auckland. As a Woolf Fisher and Krishnan Ang Scholar, Nelson then travelled halfway across the world to the UK for his doctoral studies with Prof. Ian Paterson in the synthesis of complex polyketide natural products. Nelson was then elected as a Lindemann Fellow and moved to sunny San Diego to conduct research in Pd-catalyzed C–H activation with Prof. Jin-Quan Yu. He was elected a Research Fellow at Trinity Hall, where he worked on leveraging non-covalent interactions for selective catalysis with Prof. Robert Phipps. In 2024, Nelson joined the Faculty at UVic as an Assistant Professor.