Lectures

Prof. Bruce A. Arndtsen (Department of Chemistry - McGill University - Montreal - Canada)

Alternative Energy Drivers for Palladium Catalyzed Coupling Reactions

Biography

Bruce Arndtsen was born in Minnesota in 1966. He did his undergraduate studies at Carleton College (B.A. in Chemistry, 1988). He received a Ph.D. in Chemistry (1993) at Stanford University, under the direction of Prof. Lisa McElwee-White. His thesis research probed the synthesis and reactivity of low valent metal-nitrene complexes. He was a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Robert Bergman at the University of California, Berkeley from 1993-1995, working in the area of iridium mediated alkane C-H bond activation. In 1995, he accepted his faculty position at McGill University, was promoted to associate professor in 2001 followed by full professor in 2010. Research in his group focuses on the discovery and mechanistic understanding of new approaches to chemical synthesis by transition metal catalysis. Their work has demonstrated that transition metal-based reactions can be used to design efficient, one step syntheses of a range of important core structures directly from available building blocks, as an alternative to classic multistep protocols. His group has also developed the general concept of using ion pairing with chiral anions as an alternative to chiral ligands in asymmetric transition metal catalysis. More recently, his lab has discovered new classes of 1,3-dipoles for use in cycloaddition reactions (phospha-Münchnones), as well as approaches to polymer synthesis based upon metal catalyzed multicomponent reactions, and developed mechanistic insights into each of these metal catalyzed processes. Professor Arndtsen is the recipient of a DuPont Aid in Education Award (2000), and one of only a handful in Canada to be awarded an NSERC Accelerator Grant for Exceptional New Opportunities (2004). He was his department’s nominee for a Leo Yaffe Teaching award in 1998, and in 2005 was named a William Dawson Scholar at McGill University. In 2011 he was named a James McGill Professor of Chemistry, a Canadian Research Chair Tier I equivalent at McGill University.

Email: Bruce.Arndtsen@McGill.CA

Website: http://www.arndtsen-group.mcgill.ca/

 

Prof. Joaquín García Álvarez (Departamento de Química Orgánica e Inorgánica - Universidad de Oviedo - Spain)

Design of hybrid one-pot tandem protocols by using transition-metal or s-block organometallic chemistry under greener reaction conditions

Biography

Joaquín García Álvarez studied chemistry at the University of Oviedo and received his PhD degree in 2005 under the supervision of Prof. J. Gimeno and Dr. Victorio Cadierno, studying the coordination of iminophosphorane ligands in arene-Ru(II) fragments. Then, he joined the group of Prof. Robert E. Mulvey at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow (Scotland, UK) working for two years and a half in the field of main group chemistry (alkali-metal-mediated-metallation). In 2008, he returned to the University of Oviedo as a postdoctoral researcher, thanks to the award of a contract from the regional program "Clarín" of the Principado de Asturias. The current focuses of his research are: i) the study of metal-catalyzed (Ru, Cu, Pd, Au) and metal-mediated (Li, Mg) organic reactions using environmentally friendly solvents [water and Deep Eutectic Solvents (DESs)] as reaction media; and ii) the design of one-pot processes combining both metal- and bio-catalysis. This research has been recognized over the last years with the award of a postdoctoral contract "Juan de la Cierva" in 2009, and more recently (2012), with a postdoctoral contract "Ramón y Cajal". In 2018, he was promoted to an Associate Professor position. He has published a total of 60 scientific articles and is co-author of nine book chapters on Organometallic Chemistry and Catalysis in unconventional reaction media. In 2016, he received the Prize “GEQO-Young scientist Award”; in 2017 the “Beca Leonardo a Jóvenes Investigadores y Creadores Culturales” from the BBVA fundation; and in 2018 the “PHOSAGRO/UNESCO/IUPAC Research Grant In Green Chemistry”.

Email: garciajoaquin@uniovi.es

Website: https://dptoqoi.uniovi.es/personal/pdi/-/asset_publisher/0022/content/personal_garcia-alvarez-joaquin?redirect=%2Fpersonal%2Fpdi

 

Prof. Matthias Beller (Leibniz-Institut für Katalyse e.V. (LIKAT) - Rostock - Germany)

The Importance of Organometallic Chemistry in Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Catalysis

Biography

Matthias Beller, born 1962 in Gudensberg (Germany), studied chemistry at the University of Göttingen, Germany, where he completed his PhD thesis in 1989 in the group of L.-F. Tietze. As recipient of a Liebig scholarship, he then spent a one-year with K. B. Sharpless at MIT, USA. From 1991 to 1995, Beller worked in industry. Then, he moved to the Technical University of München as Professor for Inorganic Chemistry. In 1998, he relocated to Rostock to head the Institute for Organic Catalysis, which became in 2006 the Leibniz-Institute for Catalysis. The work of his group has been published in >1075 original publications, reviews and >150 patent applications have been filed (H-index: 142). 2014 – 2021: Web of Science “Highly Cited Researcher" (among the top 1% of researchers with most cited documents in a specific field). He has received a number of awards including the Otto-Roelen Medal and the Leibniz-Price of the DFG. In 2006, he was also awarded “Entrepreneur of the Year” of Rostock and he received the German Federal Cross of Merit. Since then, he received the first “European price for Sustainable Chemistry”, the “Paul-Rylander Award” of the Organic Reaction Catalysis Society of the USA, the Gay-Lussac-Alexander-von-Humboldt-Prize of the French Academy of Sciences and the Emil Fischer Medal of the German Chemical Society. In 2015, he was awarded an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Antwerp, Belgium and received the Wöhler price for Sustainable Chemistry from the German Chemical Society as well as an ERC Advanced grant from the European Commission. In March 2016, he received the honorary doctorate of the University of Rennes 1. In 2017, Matthias Beller has received the Karl Ziegler Prize from GDCh, (German Chemical Society) and the Karl Ziegler Foundation - the award is one of the highest honors in the field of chemistry in Germany – and he was awarded as the first European chemist with the ACS Catalysis Award Lectureship. Most recently, he was selected as the prestigious “Hassel Lecturer 2018” from the University of Oslo, Norway and for the “Gordon Stone Lectureship” of the University of Bristol, UK. Matthias Beller is Vice President of the Leibniz Society – one of the major science organizations in Germany and a member of the German National Academia of Science “Leopoldina” and three other Academies of Sciences.

Email: Matthias.Beller@catalysis.de

Website: https://www.catalysis.de/en/research/applied-homogeneous-catalysis 

 

Prof. Christophe Copéret (Laboratory of Inorganic Chemistry ETH Zuerich - Switzerland)

NMR chemical shifts beyond numbers: understanding the electronic structure of reaction intermediates

Biography 

Prof. Christophe Copéret (CCH) was trained in chemistry and chemical engineering in CPE Lyon (France) and then undertook a PhD in chemistry at Purdue University (USA), where he studied the development of highly efficient synthesis of complex molecules via Pd-catalyzed carbonylation reactions in the group of Prof. E. Negishi (1991-1996). After a postdoctoral stay at the Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, USA) in the group of Prof. K.B. Sharpless (1996-1997), where he developed oxidation reactions, CCH was offered in 1998 a permanent research position in CNRS in C2P2 (at the time LCOMS, directed by Dr. Jean-Marie Basset), a laboratory devoted to catalysis, chemistry of surfaces and polymers, and was promoted CNRS Research Director in 2008. Since Nov, 1st 2010, CCH is Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences at ETH Zürich. His scientific interest lies at the frontiers of molecular, material and surface chemistry, with the aims to design functional materials with applications in catalysis (sustainable chemistry and energy), molecular recognition, imaging and microelectronics. CCH is Editor in Chief of Helvetica Chimica Acta. Besides scientific activities, CCH enjoys literature, history, cooking and wine tasting, probably a reminiscence of his childhood spent in the vineyards in Fleuri, one of the famous crû of Beaujolais (La reine) just 50 km North of Lyon.

Email: ccoperet@inorg.chem.ethz.ch

Website: https://coperetgroup.ethz.ch/the-group/people/prof-christophe-coperet.html
 

Prof.ssa Odile Eisenstein (ICGM, University Montpellier; CNRS, ENSCM, Montpellier - France; Hylleraas Centre for Quantum Molecular Sciences and Department of Chemistry, University of Oslo - Norway)

The chemistry of the Grignard systems: A cold case now open to computational studies

Biography

Odile Eisenstein was born near Paris from Jewish parents from Lithuania and Romania. After a PhD with Nguyen Trong Anh and Lionel Salem at the University of Paris-Sud at Orsay, she went for post-doc with Jack Dünitz at the ETH Zurich and then with Roald Hoffmann at Cornell. She also was assistant professor at University of Michigan. In France, she was a CNRS research professor. She started at University Paris-Sud and in 1996 she moved to the University of Montpellier. Since 2012, she is adjunct professor at the University of Oslo. She also held several visiting professor positions in the US (Indiana, Texas A&M, Berkeley), in UK (Nottingham, York), in Israel (Technion). She holds several honorary doctorates. She is a member of the French Academy of Science, a foreign member of the Norwegian Academy for Science and humanities, a foreign member of North-Westphalia Academy. She is a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science and has been president since 2018. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Science a few days before being elected to the US National Academy of Science. She is officier de l’ordre du Mérite et de l’ordre la Légion d’Honneur.

Email: odile.eisenstein@umontpellier.fr

Website:  https://www.mn.uio.no/kjemi/english/people/aca/odilee/
 

Prof.ssa Dorota Gryko (Institute of Organic Chemistry - Polish Academy of Sciences - Warsaw - Poland)

Vitamin B12 catalysis – lessons learned from nature

Biography

Dorota Gryko obtained her Ph.D. degree from the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in 1997 under the supervision of Professor J. Jurczak. After a postdoctoral stay with Professor J. Lindsey at North Carolina State University (1998–2000), she started her independent career in Poland. In 2009 she received the prestigious TEAM grant from the Foundation for Polish Science. She became Full Professor in 2015.

Email: dorota.gryko@icho.edu.pl

Website: https://ww2.icho.edu.pl/gryko_group/team.php

 

Prof.ssa Eva Hevia (Department für Chemie und Biochemie - Bern - Switzerland)

Tailoring organosodium reagents for new stoichiometric and catalytic reactions

Biography

Originally from Gijón (Spain), Eva received both her MSci degree in Chemistry and her Ph.D. degree from the Universidad de Oviedo (Spain) in 1998 and 2002 respectively. The latter under the supervision of Victor Riera and Julio Perez. After a three-year postdoctoral period at the University of Strathclyde working with Robert Mulvey, as a Marie Curie Fellow, in 2006 she took up a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and Lectureship there. Subsequently she was promoted to Senior lecturer in 2010, Reader in 2011 and as a Professor in 2013. In 2019 Eva moved to the University of Bern where she is currently a Professor in Inorganic Chemistry at the at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. She has published over 140 peer-reviewed papers in the area and to date her research has been recognised with several prestigious prizes including the 2016 SRUK Emerging Talent Award, which honours the most promising Spanish scientist in the UK under 40, and more recently by the 2017 RSC Corday-Morgan Prize awarded to the most meritorious contributions to Chemistry. An elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) and the European Academy of Sciences her research has been supported by the SNF, EPSRC, UK Charities, EU (ERC-Stg-2011), industry and governmental bodies. She sits on the International Advisory Boards of Eur. J. Inorg. Chem, Organometallics, Chem Catalysis, Chemistry Open and Asian J. Org. Chem and she has presented over 100 invited lectures worldwide.

Email: eva.hevia@unibe.ch

Website: http://www.evaheviagroup.com/

 

Prof. Igor Larrosa (School of Chemistry - University of Manchester - United Kingdom )

Mechanistic Understanding-Led Transition Metal Catalyzed C-H Functionalization

Biography

Igor was born in Barcelona, Spain. He received his undergraduate education at the Universitat de Barcelona (1999) where he also underwent M.Sc. and Ph.D. studies with Felix Urpi and Pere Romea. A fellowship from Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia supported three month's research in Professor Erick M. Carreira's laboratories at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. With a second fellowship he started postdoctoral research in Professor Anthony G. M. Barrett's group at Imperial College London, UK, were he was appointed group leader. In September 2007 he started his independent career as a Lecturer in synthetic organic chemistry at Queen Mary University of London, and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2011 and to Reader in Catalysis in 2012. In 2014 Igor moved to the University of Manchester to take up the position of Professor of Organic Chemistry. Igor received an ERC Starting Grant in 2011 and currently holds an ERC Advanced Grant. In 2019, Igor was selected for the UK Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists as a Chemistry finalist.

Email: igor.larrosa@manchester.ac.uk

Website: https://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/igor.larrosa/research.html

 

Prof. Franc Meyer (Institut für Anorganische Chemie Georg-August- Universität Göttingen -Germany)

Merging Organometallic and Bioinorganic Chemistry: N-Heterocyclic Carbene Ligands in Bioinspired Model Studies

Biography

Franc Meyer earned his Ph.D. with Peter Paetzold at RWTH Aachen (1993, boron chemistry) and was a postdoc with Peter Armentrout at the University of Utah (gas phase guided ion beam studies). On returning to Germany, he completed his Habilitation at the University of Heidelberg in 2000 and became Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Göttingen in 2001. He is a member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, the Royal Physiographic Society in Lund, and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. His group’s research focuses on the activation of small molecules and on cooperative effects in bimetallic and multimetallic complexes, with particular interests in bioinorganic chemistry, bioinspired catalysis and magnetic nanoswitches.

Email: britta.mueller@chemie.uni-goettingen.de

Website: https://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/611271.html

 

Prof.ssa Barbara Milani (Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences - University of Trieste - Trieste- Italy)

A tour around the late transition metal catalysts for polymerization reactions

Biography

Barbara Milani is Associate Professor of General and Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Trieste. Since October 2022 she is the Rectoral Delegate for Internationalization and International Mobility @ UniTS. She received her PhD degree at University of Trieste in 1994. After a post-doctoral period, she became assistant professor in 1998 and in 2014 she was promoted associate professor. She was visiting professor at Institut National Polytechnique in Toulouse in 2010 and at Universitè Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris in 2014. In 2017 she got the National Abilitation to Full Professor of General and Inorganic Chemistry. She was member of the Advisory Board of European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry (2007-2009). Currently, she is member of the Advisory Board of Dalton Transactions, and of the International Advisory Board of the International Symposium on Homogeneous Catalysis (ISHC). She was the coordinator of the PhD School Doctorate in Chemistry (joint PhD School between University of Trieste and Ca’ Foscari University Venice; 2017-2019). She is the ERASMUS coordinator for chemistry for the Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences @UniTS. Her main research interests focus on organometallic chemistry and on development of homogeneous catalysts, based on late transition metals, for polymerization reactions.

Email: milaniba@units.it

Website: https://dscf.units.it/en/node/1254

 

Prof. Bill Morandi (Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences - ETH Zürich - Switzerland)

Recent adventures in catalysis

Biography

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.

Email: bill.morandi@org.chem.ethz.ch

Website:  https://morandi.ethz.ch/people/prof-bill-morandi.html

 

Prof. Alessandro Mordini (Istituto di Chimica dei Composti Organometallici - Dipartimento di Chimica "U. Schiff" - Università di Firenze - Italy)

The Organometallic Chemist's Toolbox to Access New Molecules for Sustainable Energy and Fuels Production

Biography

Alessandro Mordini received his degree in Chemistry (with honors) in 1983 from the University of Firenze(Italy), where he also completed his PhD in 1987. The same year he became CNR researcher at the CNR Center on Heterocyclic Chemistry – University of Firenze joining the group of Prof. Alfredo Ricci where he was involved in the chemistry of Silicon and Tin organometallic derivatives. He spent three research periods in the group of Prof. Manfred Schlosser at the University of Lausanne in 1984-1985 (during the PhD course), in 1988-1989 as post doctor and in 1992 as instructor. In Lausanne he worked on the synthesis and reactivity of polar organometallic compounds and, in particular, on superbasic reagents. In 1999 he was appointed CNR Senior Researcher at the same CNR research Center in Florence which later, in 2001, became Institut on the Chemistry of Organometallic Compounds (ICCOM). In 2001 he spent three months as invited professor at the University of Kyoto. Dr. Mordini has been the Director of the NATO – ASI School “New Methodologies and Techniques in Organic Chemistry” (Certosa di Pontignano, Siena, 2005); the chairman of the “IX International Symposium on Carbanion Chemistry” (Firenze, 2010) and of the “IX Congress of the Interdivisional group of Organometallic Chemistry of the Italian Chemical Society” (Firenze, 2010). He will be the chairman of the next “Spanish-Italian Symposium on Organic Chemistry” (Firenze, 2014) and of the “XXVII International Conference on Organometallic Chemistry” (Firenze, 2018). He is Member of the Executive Board of the Interdivisional Group of Organometallic Chemistry of the Italian Chemical Society; of the Executive Board of the Tuscan Section of the Italian Chemical Society and of the Technical and Scientific Board of Polo delle Energie Rinnovabili della Regione Toscana. He is reviewer for several journal in the field of organic and organometallic chemistry and referee for some European Research Agencies. He has been the responsible of bilateral international projects and COST networks as well as responsible of research contracts with several Italian companies. He is the author of about 10 monographies and book chapter’s, 90 articles in peer-reviewed international journals mainly dealing with the synthesis and application of organometallic reagents, synthesis of new heterocyclic scaffolds, and, more recently, design and synthesis of new materials for energy.

Email: amordini.cnr@gmail.com

Website: http://www.iccom.cnr.it/it/single-profile-iccom/?uid=139

 

Prof. Thierry Ollevier (Département de chimie - Université Laval ,Québec - Canada)

Chiral Iron Catalysts for Asymmetric Organic Transformations

Biography

Thierry Ollevier was born in Brussels and obtained his B.Sc. (1991) and Ph.D. (1997) at the Université of Namur (Belgium), and was post doctorate fellow at the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium), under I. E. Markó (1997), NATO postdoctorate fellow at Stanford University under B. M. Trost (1998–2000), then post doctorate fellow at the Université de Montréal under A. B. Charette (2000–2001). After an Assistant Professor appointment (2001) at Université Laval (Québec, Canada), he became Associate (2006) and is currently Full Professor. Current research in his group aims at designing novel catalysts, developing catalytic reactions and applying these methods to chemical synthesis. He is active in the areas of iron catalysis, ligand design, asymmetric catalysis, fluorine chemistry, diazo and diazirine chemistry, flow chemistry, and bismuth chemistry. He has published more than 80 papers and 35 encyclopedia articles and book chapters. He has served as an Associate Editor of RSC Advances from 2015 to 2022 and was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2016). After 5 years served as Advisory Board member of SynOpen, he has been appointed as Editor-in-Chief of SynOpen in 2023.

Email: thierry.ollevier@chm.ulaval.ca

Website: http://www2.chm.ulaval.ca/tollevier/index.html

 

Prof.ssa Beatriz Royo (ITQB NOVA - Oeiras - Portugal)

Manganese-catalyzed hydrosilylative reduction: ligand design and mechanistic aspects

Biography

Beatriz Royo is Principal Investigator and Head of the Organometallic Catalysis Group at ITQB NOVA, University Nova of Lisbon (Portugal). She graduated with honours in Chemistry at University of Alcalá (Madrid, Spain), and obtained her PhD in 1993 at the University of Sussex, UK, where she worked on main group chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Michael F. Lappert. After her PhD, she spent four years at University of Alcalá working on early transition metals in the group of Prof. Pascual Royo, and in 1997 she moved to Lisbon to join the group of Prof. C. Romão at ITQB. In 2004, she started her independent career at ITQB as Head of the Organometallic Catalysis group. Her research spans the areas of synthetic organometallic chemistry and catalysis. Royo´s group has developed sustainable catalytic methods for a range of organic transformations using Earth-abundant metals and N-heterocyclic carbene ligands. Her research interests include hydrosilylation, hydrogen borrowing processes, oxidative coupling reactions and catalytic methods for the activation of CO2 mediated by 3d metals.

Email: broyo@itqb.unl.pt

Website: https://labs.itqb.unl.pt/organometallic-catalysis/

 

Prof. Dr. Johannes G. de Vries (Department Catalysis with Renewables - Rostock - Germany)

Use of homogeneous catalysis for the conversion of renewable resources to chemicals

Biography

Johannes G. de Vries received his PhD from the University of Groningen in 1979. After a postdoc at Brandeis University, Waltham, USA, his first job was as a medicinal chemist with Sandoz in Vienna and in London. From 1988–2013 he worked for DSM in Geleen, The Netherlands, lastly as a Principal Scientist in the area of Homogeneous Catalysis. From 1999–2018 he was part-time professor at the University of Groningen. In 2014 he became Department Head Catalysis with Renewables at the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis in Rostock, Germany. In 2013 he received the Paul N. Rylander Award for outstanding contributions in the field of catalysis as it applies to organic synthesis.

Email:  johannes.devries@catalysis.de

Website: https://www.catalysis.de/en/people/de-vries-johannes-g/curriculum-vitae