Ruizhe (Jerry) Chen

B.A., Cornell University, 2022

Jerry grew up in Shanghai, China. He attended Cornell University in Ithaca, NY where he received his B.A. in Chemistry in 2022. While at Cornell, Jerry worked in the Frank Schroeder group on sugar chemistry as well as the Todd Hyster group on asymmetric biocatalysis. He also worked on transition metal catalysis at SIOC in the Zhitao He group during the peak of Covid and did a summer research on total synthesis in the Tom Maimone group at UC Berkeley. Telling himself that he is going to do his PhD in a big city after 3 years of Ithaca, Jerry’s plan certainly did not work and joined the MacMillan lab as a grad student in July 2022. Outside of lab, he enjoys soccer, musicals, and throwing random jokes.

Fun Facts

• Jerry was seriously trained as a voice actor for about 3 years.
• Jerry was once stopped at the US border because he does not look like his passport.
• Jerry was double-majoring in chemistry and philosophy but thinks that the Ithaca snowstorm is too bad for him to stay another year for his philosophy degree.
• Jerry has a really long orange cat Mitchy with him. Despite not being fat, his length has put him close to the weight limit of American Airlines.