BOSS XVIII

Varinder K. Aggarwal studied chemistry at Cambridge University and received his Ph.D. in 1986 under the guidance of Dr. Stuart Warren. After postdoctoral studies (1986-1988) under Prof. Gilbert Stork, Columbia University, he returned to the UK as a Lecturer at Bath University. In 1991 he moved to Sheffield University, where he was promoted to Professor in 1997. In 2000 he moved to Bristol University where he holds the Chair in Synthetic Chemistry. He has received numerous awards including RSC Perkin Award 2013; Gilbert Stork Lectureship at University of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, 2016; Humboldt Research Award 2017; RSC Organic Synthesis Award 2017; Kurt Alder Lectureship 2018, Arthur C. Cope Award 2019, the Yamada-Koga Prize 2019, RS Davy Medal 2019, and the Xingda Lectureship Peking University, 2020. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2012. He has published >350 papers, 18 book chapters and 9 patents. He has an h index of 71.

Dr. Yiyun Chen is a Professor at the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a member of China's State Key Laboratory of Bioorganic and Natural Products Chemistry. Chen obtained a bachelor's degree in chemistry at Peking University in 2002 and earned his Ph.D. degree in organic chemistry in 2007 at Princeton University. Afterward, he performed postdoctoral research at Harvard University and Howard Hughes Medical Institute in chemical biology. In the fall of 2011, Chen joined the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry as a Principal Investigator, with a research interest in biocompatible photochemistry, including organic photochemistry and photochemical biology.

The research goal is to develop versatile bond-cleaving and bond-forming reactions in a biocompatible fashion to enable the photo-manipulation of biological functions, for the potential photo-diagnostics and photo-therapy applications.

Group website: http://yiyunchen.sioc.ac.cn, research group Twitter: @bio_photochem.

Josep Cornella (Pep) was born in La Bisbal del Penedès, a small town in south Catalunya. He graduated in chemistry in 2008 from the University of Barcelona and carried MSc studies in the Department of Organic Chemistry studying the chemistry of allylboron reagents.

After completing his masters thesis, he moved to the United Kingdom to pursue doctoral studies in the group of Prof. Igor Larrosa (QMUL). In early 2012, he earned his PhD working on the use of aromatic carboxylic acids as aryl donors in metal-catalyzed decarboxylative reactions. He then moved back to Catalunya, where he joined the group of Prof. Ruben Martin (ICIQ) as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow. There, he developed novel transformations involving Ni-catalyzed C–O bond activation and carbon dioxide insertion into organic molecules.

In 2015, Pep obtained a Beatriu de Pinós Fellowship to carry out further postdoctoral studies in the group of Prof. Phil S. Baran at The Scripps Research Institute, California, USA. During this time at Scripps, he worked on the discovery and implementation of new transformations based on the concept of “redox-active esters” as practical and readily available partners for Ni- and Fe-catalyzed C–C bond forming reactions.

In spring 2017, he was appointed as a Max Planck Group Leader in the Department of Organometallic Chemistry at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany.

Jeanne Crassous is a CNRS Research Director at the University of Rennes (France).

She received her PhD in 1996 on the absolute configuration of bromochlorofluoromethane (CHFClBr) under the supervision of Prof. André collet (ENS Lyon, France). After a one-year postdoctoral period studying the chirality of fullerenes in Prof. François Diederich’s group (ETH Zurich, Switzerland), she received a CNRS researcher position at the ENS Lyon in 1998 and then she joined the “Institut des Sciences Chimiques de Rennes” (University of Rennes 1, France) in 2005. She is currently coordinating a French national network (GDR CHIRAFUN, Chirality and multifunctionality) and a European ITN Project (HEL4CHIROLEDs, Helical molecules for Chiral OLEDs). She is member of the Editorial Board of Chirality journal (Wiley). In 2020, she received the National Prize of the Organic Chemistry Division of the French Chemical Society (DCO-SCF). In 2023, she was awarded the CNRS Silver Medal. She is also a Member of the European Academy of Science (EurASc) and Chemistry Europe Fellow.

Her group is dealing with many fields of chirality (heteroatomic and organometallic helicenes, chiral π-conjugated systems and assemblies, fundamental aspects of chirality such as parity violation effects). She is studying chiroptical activity (electronic and circular dichroism, circularly polarized luminescence) for potential applications in optoelectronics and spintronics.

She is co-author of more than 170 articles and has presented her work in more than 55 invited lectures and 65 seminars in laboratories.

Abigail Doyle received her A.B. and A.M. summa cum laude in Chemistry and Chemical Biology from Harvard University in 2002. She began her graduate studies at Stanford University working with Professor Justin Du Bois. In 2003, she transferred to Harvard University and joined the laboratory of Professor Eric Jacobsen. Her graduate research included the discovery of a transition metal-catalyzed enantioselective alkylation of tributyltin enolates with alkyl halides and the development of a thiourea catalyst for enantioselective nucleophilic additions to prochiral oxocarbenium ions. Abby began her independent career at Princeton University in 2008 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2013 and the A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Chemistry in 2015. In 2021, she and her research group moved to the University of California, Los Angeles, where Abby is currently the Saul Winstein Chair in Organic Chemistry. The Doyle lab conducts research at the interface of organic, organometallic, and physical organic chemistry, enhanced by the use of modern data science and machine learning tools. Our goal is to address unsolved problems in organic synthesis through the development of novel catalysts, catalytic reactions, and synthetic methods. We implement mechanistic and computer-assisted techniques to uncover general chemical principles, predict unseen reactivity, and discover new reactions.

Mark Levin was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1990. He received a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Rochester in 2012 before obtaining his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley with Professor F. Dean Toste in 2017. He then moved to Harvard University to complete an NIH funded postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Eric Jacobsen. In 2019, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2022. His research group has focused on the development of new synthetic methodology and the study of their mechanisms, and he is particularly interested in chemical reactions which can edit the molecular skeleton at the single-atom level of precision. Levin’s work has been recognized by several awards including the Packard Fellowship, Dreyfus Fellowship, Sloan Fellowship, FMC Young Investigator Award, Amgen Young Investigator Award, and the Bayer Early Excellence in Science Award.

Paolo Melchiorre was born in 1973 in Camerino, Italy.
He studied Chemistry at the University of Bologna – Alma Mater Studiorum (Italy), where he graduated in 1999. He received his PhD in Chemistry in 2003 at Bologna University working in the area of asymmetric catalysis, under the direction of Professor Achille Umani-Ronchi and the supervision of Professor Pier Giorgio Cozzi. In 2002, he spent a period in Denmark working with Professor Karl Anker Jørgensen at the “Center for Catalysis”, Århus University, where his studies centered on asymmetric organocatalysis. In 2003, Paolo worked as a postdoctoral associate with Professor Giuseppe Bartoli, at the Industrial Chemistry Faculty of the Bologna University.
In October 2007, he took a permanent position as an Assistant Professor at Bologna University. In September 2009, Paolo joined the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ) in Tarragona as an ICREA (Catalan Institution of Research and Advanced Studies) Professor and ICIQ Group Leader.
Paolo has received the “G. Ciamician” Medal, awarded by the Italian Chemical Society (2007), a JSPS Fellowship under the FY2013 Program for Research in Japan, the 2016 Prize for Scientific Excellence from the Royal Spanish Chemical Society (RSEQ), and the 2019 “G. Modena” Medal from the Italian Chemical Society. He was also nominated Liebig Lecturer 2008 by the Organic Division of the German Chemical Society and he received the 2021 Pedler Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC).
He was featured in the “Author Profile section” of Angewandte Chemie (ACIE 2009, 48, 3389). Since 2019, Paolo is an Associate Editor of Chemical Science, the flag-ship journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). In 2020, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC).
In 2011, Paolo has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant to carry out the 5-year project “ORGA-NAUT: Exploring Chemical Reactivity with Organocatalysis”, while in 2016 he has been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant to carry out the 5-year project “CATA-LUX: Light-Driven Asymmetric Organocatalysis”, both funded by the European Research Council.
Paolo has authored more than 140 publications in international scientific journals. His papers have received more than 16000 citations. He has delivered more than 190 invited lectures and seminars at the national and international level.
In October 2022, Paolo moved back to his Alma Mater, the University of Bologna, where he is presently Professor of Chemistry. Part of his group is performing research at ICIQ

Prof. Rebecca Melen studied for her undergraduate (B.A. and MSci) and PhD degrees at the University of Cambridge, completing her PhD in 2012 with Prof. Dominic Wright in the field of main group chemistry. Following postdoctoral studies with Prof. Douglas Stephan in Toronto and with Prof. Lutz Gade in Heidelberg, she took up a position at Cardiff University in 2014, where she is now a Professor in inorganic chemistry. In 2018, she was awarded an EPSRC early career fellowship and she is the recipient of the 2019 RSC Harrison Meldola Memorial Prize and a 2022 Philip Leverhulme Prize in Chemistry. She has over 100 publications and has secured over €12m in grand funding. She sits on several journal advisory boards and is an associate editor of the RSC journal EES Catalysis. Her research interests lie in main group chemistry and the applications of main group Lewis acids in synthesis and catalysis.

Timothy Noël is a researcher in the field of synthetic organic chemistry and technology, with a particular interest in the delicate synergy between the two fields. In 2004, Tim earned his MSc degree in Industrial Chemical Engineering before pursuing his passion for synthetic organic chemistry, which led him to complete his PhD under the supervision of Professor Johan Van der Eycken at Ghent University in 2009. Following his PhD, he traveled across the Atlantic as a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow to work with Professor Stephen L. Buchwald at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he gained valuable experience and expertise in flow chemistry. Upon returning to Europe, he joined Eindhoven University of Technology as an Assistant Professor in 2012, and later became an Associate Professor in 2017. In 2020, Tim was promoted to Full Professor at the University of Amsterdam, where he is now the Chair of Flow Chemistry. His research in the area of flow chemistry was recognized with several awards, including the DECHEMA award (2017), the Hoogewerff Youth Prize (2019), the IUPAC-ThalesNano Flow Chemistry Award (2020), the KNCV Gold Medal (2021) and the ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering Lectureship Award 2022. He is the editor in chief of Journal of Flow Chemistry.

Matt Sigman was born in Los Angeles, California in 1970. He received a B.S. in chemistry from Sonoma State University in 1992 before obtaining his Ph.D. at Washington State University with Professor Bruce Eaton in 1996 in organometallic chemistry. He then moved to Harvard University to complete an NIH funded postdoctoral stint with Professor Eric Jacobsen. In 1999, he joined the faculty of the University of Utah where his research group has focused on the development of new synthetic methodology with an underlying interest in reaction mechanism. His research integrates the study/development of new chemical reactions with the invention of new data science approaches to reaction interrogation. He currently is the Peter J. Christine S. Stang Presidential Endowed Chair of Chemistry at the rank of Distinguished Professor and is the department chair. Sigman’s research efforts have been recognized by several awards including the Pfizer Award for Creativity in Organic Chemistry (2004), the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award (2004), the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (2010), the University of Utah Distinguished Research Award (2011) and ACS Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry (2017). Additionally, he has been recognized for outstanding teaching at the University of Utah as highlighted by being named the University of Utah Distinguished Honors Professor (2008), the Robert W. Parry Award (2009) and Distinguished Teaching Award (2022).

Georgios Vassilikogiannakis is Professor of Synthetic Organic Chemistry at the University of Crete. He obtained his Ph.D. (1998) in Physical Organic Chemistry with Prof. Michael Orfanopoulos from the University of Crete (Greece). From 1999-2002, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Scripps Research Institute (California, U.S.A.) in the group of Prof. K. C. Nicolaou. In 2002 he started his academic career at the University of Crete initially as an Assistant Professor. In 2008, he was promoted to Associate Professor, and, in 2013, to Full Professor. Among other European funding programs, he is the recipient of an ERC starting grant and an ERC Proof of Concept (PoC) grant. He is member of the Editorial Board of ChemPhotoChem, member of the Advisory Board of OBC (RSC). His research interests are in the field of Sustainable Synthetic Organic Chemistry with a particular focus on the development and application of new green synthetic methodologies and their applications in the synthesis of natural products. He has considerable expertise in developing technologies that use Singlet Oxygen as a green oxidant and cascade reaction facilitator as well as the development of continuous flow photoreactors. You can find more information in the website: http://www.chemistry.uoc.gr/vassilikogiannakis/

Bert Weckhuysen is a Distinguished University Professor at Utrecht University (The Netherlands). He received his Master and PhD degrees from Leuven University (Belgium) in 1991, and 1995, respectively, after which he has worked as a postdoc at Lehigh University (PA, USA) and Texas A&M University (TX, USA). The research group has been active for many years in the design, synthesis, characterization and application of solid catalysts for the manufacturing of our current and future transportation fuels, chemicals and materials. Recent research is devoted to the catalytic activation of CO2 via thermal and electrocatalytic pathways and the photocatalytic and electrocatalytic splitting of H2O into H2 and O2, as well as the chemical recycling of plastics and the upgrading of municipal and agricultural waste. He has received for his work on in-situ and operando spectroscopy many scientific prizes, including the Emmett Award, Bourke Award, Spinoza Award, Tanabe Prize, and Chemistry Europe Award. He has been appointed Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion and is a member of a.o. the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and Arts, and European Academy of Science. He serves on national and international boards, and directs several large-scale research initiatives, including ARC CBBC, MCEC, and SUNERGY. Weckhuysen is currently president of the European Federation of Catalysis Societies.

Shigehiro Yamaguchi received his Dr. Eng. from Kyoto University in 1997. He worked with Professor Kohei Tamao at the Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University as an Assistant Professor from 1993. After spending a year to work with Professor Timothy M. Swager in Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA as a visiting scholar from 2000 to 2001, he joined Nagoya University as an Associate Professor in 2003, and promoted to a full Professor in 2005. Since 2013, he is a professor at Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules. Prof. Yamaguchi’s research interests include the materials chemistry on the basis of main group chemistry. Making use of specific effects of main group elements, particularly boron, silicon and phosphorus, he has so far produced a range of molecules with both fascinating structures and properties, which can serve numerous purposes, such as anion sensors, light emitters, and electron-transporting materials. He is also currently engaged in a project that aims at the development of fluorescent probes for bioimaging.