He also co-founded Vividion Therapeutics in 2016 with fellow Scripps chemists Benjamin Cravatt and Phil Baran,[6][7] and is a member of the scientific advisory board of Chemveda Life Sciences.
[9] Yu then went on to the Guangzhou Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences where he worked on heterogeneous reactions of terpenes with zeolite materials with Prof. Shu-De Xiao, obtaining his M.Sc.
[9] At Cambridge, he studied biosynthesis and the mechanistic details of the hydrometallation step in asymmetric hydrogenation reactions with heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysts, among the twenty-one papers he co-authored with Spencer.
[16][17] From 2001-2002, Yu worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University in the laboratory of Prof. E. J. Corey on selective palladium-catalyzed allylic oxidation reactions.
One strategy to achieve selective C–H activation under mild conditions is to use metal-based catalysts that are guided to the targeted C–H bond by nearby directing functional groups.
Yu has contributed metal palladium-catalyzed C-H bond activation promoted by "weak coordination," that is by directing group effects.
[27][28] Yu is the recipient of numerous awards and honors for his work in organic chemistry reaction development, including a MacArthur Fellowship (also known as a "Genius Grant") in 2016.