Group Leader Stories
New Group Leaders on Board
Marcos G. Suero and Julio LLoret-Fillol joined ICIQ after being selected throught the ICIQ Starting Career Programme, aimed to attract new talent and help young promising researchers to start their independent careers.
Dr. Lloret-Fillol develops a project aimed to merge concepts at the edge of the fields of solar fuels production and catalytic transformation facilitated by coordination complexes to perform new light-driven catalytic transformations of organic substrates. This project may open newer and greener avenues toward the application of artificial photosynthetic schemes in catalytic transformations of organic molecules of added value.
Dr. Suero plans to explore new reactivity concepts using catalysis and its applications in solving important synthesis problems. Particularly, he aims to develop new carbon–hydrogen bond functionalization strategies of simple building blocks that could be used for the preparation of complex molecules and biologically privileged structural motifs.
Atsushi Urakawa and José Ramón Galán-Mascarós Got Tenure
After a demanding evaluation by several members of ICIQ’s Scientific Committee, José-Ramón Galán-Mascarós and Atsushi Urakawa received tenure at ICIQ.
The evaluation committee cited Galán-Mascarós as a highly creative, enthusiastic, and productive researcher. He has focused his research throughout the last five years on the development of molecular materials with combination of chemical and physical properties (redox, magnetic, electrical and/or optical, etc…). The committee viewed his work in the area of chiral magnetism as being particularly exciting and promising.
As for Urakawa, the committee highlighted the fact that he brings a unique set of skills to the Institute that include chemical engineering, in situ spectroscopy and computer modelling of timely research problems in catalysis. They were also particularly impressed with Urakawa’s invention of modulation enhanced diffraction (MED) method, and its application to important problems in catalysis.
Javier de Mendoza Retires
Professor de Mendoza joined ICIQ in 2004. On December 2014 ICIQ organized a Mini-symposium honouring him on the occasion of his retirement. (Symposium Pictures). To get an insight of de Mendozas’ career and life, please watch this video in which he recalls the key points that made him pursue research in supramolecular chemistry or take a look at the ICIQ Newsletter (December 2014). It contains an interview with him and an overview of the highlights of his career.