BOSS XVII

Frank Glorius studied chemistry at the University of Hannover, including a 9 month research stint to the group of Paul Wender at Stanford University. After a PhD with Andreas Pfaltz at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung and University of Basel, he did a postdoctoral stay with the late David A. Evans at Harvard University. In Summer of 2001 Frank started his independent career at the MPI für Kohlenforschung and became Assoc. Prof. at the University of Marburg in 2004. Since 2007 he is Full Professor at the University of Muenster. His research program for one focusses on the development of new concepts for diverse areas of catalysis such as photocatalysis, C–H activation, smart screening and data-based technologies including machine learning, N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) in organocatalysis and in (asymmetric) arene hydrogenation. He is also interested in the design of functional molecules for modern batteries, surface modification and in-membrane applications. He has published more than 400 peer reviewed papers, many of which are highly cited. His work was highlighted by several awards such as the German Leibniz Award, the American ACS Cope Scholar Award, the Japanese Mukaiyama Award or MSD Award of the British RSC. He is most proud on the more than 170 excellent group members he has mentored, many of which have become leaders in industry and academia themselves.

Guy Bertrand is Distinguished Professor and Director of the UCSD/CNRS Joint Research Chemistry Laboratory at the University of California at San Diego. He received his PhD from the University Paul Sabatier in 1979. After being a CNRS group leader at the University of Toulouse, and then at the Laboratoire de Chimie de Coordination du CNRS, he has been the Director of the Laboratoire d'Hétérochimie Fondamentale et Appliquée at the University Paul Sabatier from 1998 to 2005. From 2001 to 2012 he served as the Director of the UCR/CNRS Joint Research Chemistry Laboratory that he created, and moved to UC San Diego in 2012. For many years, challenging the rules in chemistry textbooks was one of his sources of inspiration, as exemplified by his quest for stable carbenes, nitrenes, diradicals, bent-allenes, etc. He still likes to tame reactive molecules, but he also wants to transform these compounds into useful tools for synthetic chemists. Recently, his group has shown that stable carbenes and related metal-free species can activate small molecules and stabilize highly reactive intermediates. Now, they wish to show that they are not only able to break bonds, but that they are also capable of transferring the corresponding fragments to substrates. In other words, they want their organic species to perform tasks that were previously exclusive for transition metal complexes.

Jonathan Clayden was born in Uganda in 1968, grew up in the county of Essex in the East of England, and was an undergraduate at Churchill College, Cambridge. In 1992 he completed a PhD at the University of Cambridge with Dr Stuart Warren. After postdoctoral work at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris with Prof. Marc Julia, he moved in 1994 to the University of Manchester as a lecturer. In 2001 he was promoted to a professorship, in 2015 he moved to the University of Bristol. His research interests encompass various areas of synthesis and stereochemistry, particularly where conformation has a role to play: asymmetric synthesis, atropisomerism, organolithium chemistry, biomimetic function using dynamic foldamers, and using extended molecules to achieve long-range communication of information. He has published 300 papers, and is a co-author of the widely used undergraduate textbook on Organic Chemistry (2nd edn, 2012). His book “Organolithiums: Selectivity for Synthesis” was published in 2002. He was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Merck Award in 2011 and Tilden Prize in 2018, and he was awarded the Prix Franco-Britannique by the Société Française de Chimie in 2019. He has held a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit award and two European Research Council Advanced Investigator Grants.

Leroy (Lee) Cronin FRSE was born in the UK in 1973 was appointed to be Regius Professor of Chemistry in Glasgow in 2013 after being a professor (2009 & 2006) and reader in Glasgow since 2002. Between 2000-2002 he was a lecturer at the University of Birmingham. Alexander von Humboldt research fellow (Uni. of Bielefeld); 1997-1999: Research fellow (Uni. of Edinburgh); 1997: Ph.D. Bio-Inorganic Chemistry, Uni. of York; 1994 BSc. Chemistry, First Class, Uni. of York. Prizes include 2019 Japan Society of Coordination Chemistry International Prize, 2018 ACS Inorganic Lectureship, 2018 RSC Interdisciplinary Prize, 2015 RSC Tilden Prize, 2013 BP/RSE Hutton Prize, 2012 RSC Corday Morgan, 2011, Election to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2009. His research has four main aims 1) the construction of an artificial life form / work out how inorganic chemistry transitioned to biology / searching for new life forms; 2) the digitization of chemistry; and 3) the use of artificial intelligence in chemistry including the construction of ‘wet’ chemical computers; 4) The exploration of complexity and information in chemistry. He runs a team of around 60 people funded by grants from the UK EPSRC, US DARPA, Templeton, Google, BAe, JM and is developing both ‘open-source’ as well as commercial chemputers. See www.chemify.org

Professor Jinbo Hu was born in Zhejiang, China in 1973. After he completed his B.S. (Hangzhou University) and M.S. (Chinese Academy of Sciences) degrees, he did his Ph.D. work during 1997 to 2002 at the University of Southern California with Professors G. K. S. Prakash and G. A. Olah. After his postdotoral work at USC, he joined the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIOC, CAS) as a full professor in early 2005, where he served as the Head of the CAS Key Laboratory of Organofluorine Chemistry during 2010 to 2020. He is a highly creative and imaginative organic chemist, who has made major contributions to the field of synthetic organofluorine chemistry, especially in developing new reagents and reactions that make fluoroalkylation and fluoroolefination easier. Difluoromethyl 2-pyridyl sulfone, N-tosyl-S-difluoromethyl-S-phenylsulfoximine, 2-[(difluoromethyl)sulfonyl]benzo[d]thiazole, together with their derivative sodium difluoromethanesulfinate, have received wide use in academia and have been recognized as “Hu’s Reagents”. Jinbo has pioneered the development of novel difluorocarbene reagents from fluoromethylsilanes. He has disclosed (bromodifluoromethyl)trimethylsilane as the most versatile and general difluorocarbene source for introducing difluoromethyl, difluoromethylene and difluoromethylidene motifs into various organic molecules. He has also co-developed (trifluoromethyl)trimethylsilane as a convenient difluorocarbene source. The gem-difluorocyclopropanation of alkene with (trifluoromethyl)trimethylsilane is an important reaction in pharmaceutical research. His related contributions include the on-site generation of tetrafluoroethene from (trifluoromethyl)trimethylsilane for its safe use in academia and the selective assembly of fluorinated carbons by using (bromodifluoromethyl)- and (trifluoromethyl)trimethylsilane to synthesize tetrafluoroethylene-, pentafluoroethyl-, and bis(difluoromethyl)methylene-contaning organic molecules. Jinbo has also achieved several ground-breaking fluorination methods, including the organocatalyzed Balz-Schiemann fluorination, the selective deoxyfluorination of electron-rich alcohols with 3,3-difluoro-1,2-diarylcyclopropenes (CpFluors), the rapid deoxyfluorination of alcohols with N-tosyl-4-chlorobenzenesulfonimidoyl fluoride (SulfoxFluor) at room temperature, and the fluorinative cross-coupling of gem-difluoroolefins and non-fluorinated olefins. All these methods are state-of-the-art in synthetic organofluorine chemistry. Jinbo is highly prolific with more than 200 publications (with H index 58) and thirty patents. His published work has been highly cited and he has received many awards and accolades including RSC Fluorine Award, Novartis Chemistry Lectureship and IOCF Lectureship.

Kazuaki Ishihara is a Professor in Graduate School of Engineering, Nagoya University, Japan. He received his Doctorate of Engineering degree from Nagoya University in 1991 with Professor Hisashi Yamamoto. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University with Professor E. J. Corey, he moved back to Japan in 1992 and worked his way up from Assistant Professor (1992–1997) to Associate Professor (1997–2002) and now his current position (2002–) at Nagoya University. Professor Ishihara has received numerous awards and honors for his work. His representative awards include: the Mukaiyama Award (2009), the Society of Iodine Science Award (2015), the Synthetic Organic Chemistry Award (2016), and the Chemical Society of Japan Award (2017). Professor Ishihara has served on numerous editorial advisory boards, including: “Letters in Organic Chemistry,” “European Journal of Organic Chemistry,” “Asian Journal of Organic Chemistry,” and “Topics in Current Chemistry.” His principle areas of research have evolved over time from the design of chiral Lewis–Bronsted combined acid catalysts to the design of superacids to the design of biomimetic catalysts to the design of supramolecular acid-base combined catalysts. His current research is in developing catalytic, organic reactions and processes directed toward green & sustainable chemistry.

Daniele obtained his PhD at the University of Sheffield under the supervision of Professor Iain Coldham (2010). After postdoctoral studies with Professor Magnus Rueping (RWTH Aachen University) and with Professor Peter H. Seeberger (Max Planck Institute) he joined the group of Professor Varinder K. Aggarwal FRS as Research Officer (University of Bristol). In 2014 he commenced his independent career as Lecturer in Organic Chemistry at the University of Manchester and was promoted to Reader in 2018. The group’s main research interests are in the area of catalysis and synthetic chemistry, with a focus on the assembly of N-containing molecule. Daniele was awarded an EPSRC Early Career Fellowship in 2016, the ERC Starting Grant in 2017 and the RSC Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize in 2018.

Ruben Martin was born in Barcelona in 1976. He received his Ph.D in 2003 at the Universitat de Barcelona with Prof. Antoni Riera, working on the total synthesis of glycosidases inhibitors. In January 2004 he moved to the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung as a Humboldt postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Alois Fürstner, where he worked on the application of novel iron catalysts for cross-coupling and Alder-ene type reactions. In September 2008 he joined the ICIQ as a group leader. His current research interests concern the discovery and development of synthetically useful organometallic methodologies. Rubén Martín was promoted to Associate Professor in July 2013.In october 2013, he became ICREA (Catalan Institution of Research and Advanced Studies) Research Professor. During his time at ICIQ, he has received the 2010 RSEQ Young Investigator Award, 2011 Thieme Chemistry Journal Award, 2011 Eli Lilly Young Research Investigator Award, 2015 RSEQ Excellent Research Award, 2011 ERC Starting Grant, 2017 Marcial Moreno Lectureship Award, 2017 OMCOS Award, 2017 Liebig-Lectureship Award, 2018 Pharmaron Lectureship Award, 2018 Bristol-Myers-Squibb Lectureship Award, 2018 Genentech Lectureship Award, 2018 ChemSocRev Pioneering Investigator Award, 2018 Hirata Award, 2018 IOCF Lectureship Award, 2018 Banc Sabadell Award to Sciences and Engineering, 2019 ParazaPharma Lectureship Award, 2019 Boehringer Ingelheim Award, 2019 MIT/Merck Lectureship Award, 2019 Novartis Chemistry Lectureship Award and 2020 Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award.

Professor Bill Morandi studied at ETH Zürich (2003–2008), receiving a BSc in Biology and a MSc in Chemical Biology. From 2008 to 2012, he pursued his PhD in organic synthesis at the same institution in the labs of Professor Erick M. Carreira. Afterwards, he moved to the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, CA) for a postdoctoral stay with Professor Robert H. Grubbs. From 2014 to 2018, he was an independent Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung (Mülheim, Germany), before subsequently returning to ETH Zürich as a Professor in 2018. He is currently Full Professor of synthetic organic chemistry and heads the Institute of Organic Chemistry (Laboratorium für Organische Chemie) at ETH Zürich. His research program targets the design and development of new catalytic reactions for the synthesis of small molecules and materials, as well as the valorization of renewable feedstocks and waste material. He has received numerous awards, among them a Novartis Early Career Award in Organic Chemistry, the Carl Duisberg Memorial Prize from the German Chemical Society and a selection as a C&EN's Talented 12. He is currently an Associate Editor for Organic Chemistry Frontiers, a journal from the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Prof. Dr. Sarah Ellen O’Connor is Director of the Department of Natural Product Biosynthesis at the Max Planck Institute of Chemical Ecology (Jena, Germany). She obtained her PhD in Organic Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001, and was an ACS Irving Sigal post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Biological Chemistry at Harvard Medical School (Boston, USA) from 2001-2003. From 2003-2011 she was Assistant and Associate Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from 2011-2019 she was a Project Leader and Professor in the Department of Biological Chemistry at the John Innes Centre, and in 2019 she moved to the Max Planck Institute of Chemical Ecology. Her major research interest is plant biosynthetic pathways, where her group takes a multi-disciplinary approach to discover new genes responsible biosynthesis of complex natural products. Her group also studies the mechanism, engineering and evolution of these biosynthetic enzymes.

Jean Rodriguez was born in Cieza (Spain) in 1958, and in 1959 his family emigrated to France. He is currently Professor of organic chemistry at Aix-Marseille University (AMU) and director of the Institut des Sciences Moléculaires de Marseille (iSm2), a joint research unit (UMR) with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). After studying chemistry at AMU, he completed his Ph.D. starting in 1984 as a CNRS researcher with Prof. B. Waegell and Prof. P. Brun. He then moved to the University of California at Berkeley (US) to join the group of Prof. K. P. C. Vollhardt as a postdoctoral associate for one year. After completion of his Habilitation Diploma (HDR) from AMU in 1992 he was awarded the ACROS prize in Organic Chemistry in 1998, and in 2009 the prize of the Division of Organic Chemistry from the French Chemical Society. More recently, he was nominated “Distinguished member” of the French Chemical Society and became member of the Editorial Board of the European Journal of Organic Chemistry, both in 2013. The same year, he was chairman of the 18th European Symposium on Organic Chemistry for which he is a member of the Scientific International Board. His research interests include the development of multiple bond-forming transformations involving domino and multicomponent reactions, with a recent focus on new enantioselective organocatalyzed transformations and multicalytic systems based on the reactivity of 1,2- and 1,3-dicarbonyl compounds for the control of central, axial and helical chiralities.

Gerard Roelfes is professor of Biomolecular Chemistry & Catalysis at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He obtained his MSc and PhD (2000) from the University of Groningen. His PhD research he carried out under supervision of Prof. Ben L. Feringa, in a joint project with the group of Prof. Lawrence Que Jr. (Univ. Minnesota), in whose lab he carried out part of the work. After his PhD he went for a post-doctoral stay with Prof. Donald Hilvert at the ETH-Zürich (Switzerland). In 2003 he returned to the University of Groningen as a junior research group leader. He became Assistant Professor in 2006, Associate Professor in 2010 and since 2015 is Full Professor. His research interests are enzyme design, bio-orthogonal catalysis and catalysis in living cells.

Brian M. Stoltz was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1970. After spending a year abroad at the Ludwig Maximilians Universität in München, Germany, he obtained his B.S. degree in Chemistry and B.A. degree in German from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania in Indiana, PA. Following graduate work at Yale University in the lab of John L. Wood and an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard in the Corey lab he took a position at the California Institute of Technology. A member of the Caltech faculty since 2000, he is currently Professor of Chemistry. His research interests lie in the development of new methods for general applications in synthetic chemistry and biologically active small molecules. Among his many distinctions, Professor Stoltz has been the recipient of the Arthur C. Cope Scholar and the E. J. Corey Awards from the American Chemical Society, the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (PECASE) from the White House, the 2009 Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences for Chemistry, and was the 2015 recipient of the Mukaiyama Award by the Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry, Japan. He was named the recipient of the 2018 American Chemical Society Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry and in 2019 became a Fellow of the American Chemical Society. Professor Stoltz has trained more than 200 students and postdocs, who have gone on to successful independent careers in industry and academia. In 2017, he was awarded the Richard P. Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching at Caltech, the highest honor for teaching at the institute.

Studies ETH Zürich (1987-1992); Ph. D. ETH Zürich (1995, Supervisor: Prof. D. Seebach, asymmetric synthesis); Postdoc Pittsburgh Univ. (1995-1996, Supervisor: Prof. D. P. Curran, fluorous chemistry); Habilitation ETH Zürich (1996-2000, radical chemistry); Associate Prof. Marburg Univ. (2000-2004, radical chemistry in synthesis and in materials science); Full Prof. Münster Univ. (2004-present, radical chemistry, surface chemistry, catalysis).

Mei-Xiang Wang graduated from Fudan University (1983). After spending 3 years in Beijing General Research Institute of Non-ferrous Metals as a research associ-ate, he joined Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ICCAS) at Beijing and obtained his master degree (1989) and PhD (1992). He then worked at ICCAS ranking from assistant professor, associate professor to professor. He has joined Tsinghua University since the May of 2009. His research interests in-clude macrocyclic and supramolecular chemistry, anion- non-covalent bond in-teractions, high valent organocopper chemistry, catalytic asymmetric reactions of tertiary enamides, enantioselective biotransformations of nitriles and amides and their applications in the synthesis of natural products and bioactive compounds.

Jérôme Waser studied chemistry at ETH Zurich, where he obtained his PhD degree in 2006 with Prof. Erick M. Carreira. In 2006, he joined Prof. Barry M. Trost at Stanford University as a SNF postdoctoral fellow. Since October 2007 he has been professor of organic chemistry at the Laboratory of Catalysis and Organic Synthesis (LCSO) at the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering (ISIC) of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where he was promoted full professor in 2019. His research group is focusing on the development of Umpolung strategies based on the use of heterocyclic hypervalent iodine reagents, the application of strained rings in synthetic chemistry and new tethering approaches for selective functionalization.

Joanna Wencel-Delord was educated in chemistry at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Rennes, France and she received her Ph.D. in 2010 from the University of Rennes 1, France (Dr. C. Crévisy and Dr. M. Mauduit). After postdoctoral studies with Prof. F. Glorius at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (Germany) and a temporary assistant professor position at the University of Strasbourg (Prof. P. Compain), she joined CNRS (The French National Centre for Scientific Research) in 2013 as an associate researcher in the group of Prof. F. Colobert (University of Strasbourg, France). In 2021 she was promoted to the position of Research Director (CNRS). Her research focuses on the transition metal-catalyzed asymmetric C–H activation and synthesis of axially chiral compounds, including N–C atropisomeric molecules. She is also focusing on the chemistry of rare hypervalent compounds. Her recent awards and distinctions include an Emerging Investigator Prize of the Organic Chemistry Division, French Chemical Society (2018), Bronze Medal of CNRS (2020), ERC SG (2020), and Guy Ourisson Award (2021).

Johan Winne started his independent academic career as an assistant professor in 2015 at Ghent University. In 2020, he was promoted to a tenured position of associate professor (‘hoofddocent’). At Ghent, he now leads an organic synthesis research group, consisting of chemists fascinated by terpene natural product families, modular heterocyclic building blocks, and cycloadditions. His lab also closely collaborates with research groups active in polymer chemistry, pharmacy and plant biology. These collaborations date back to his postdoctoral period, where in addition to tackling projects in the area in which he was trained (i.e. terpenoid natural product (bio)synthesis), he also grew a fascination for the development of new dynamic covalent chemistries and click-type bioorthogonal reactions, useful for the functionalisation of (bio)macromolecules.