Maru attended the ceremony of investiture of Doctor Honoris causa of Dr. Jesús Egido de los Ríos, as a member of the Doctoral School.
Dr. Gemma Triola from IQAC (Barcelona), visited today ISQCH to tell us about Chemical biology of lipids and proteins. Tools to study Lipid-Proteins interactions. Very interesting talk!
As nice as always to share some time with a good old friend!
Thanks for visiting us! Come back soon 😉
This “alicantino” came to Zaragoza for the first time in 2012 for an internship in our group. It seems Cierzo was not an issue 😉 and when he finished his Degree in Chemistry came back to study a Master (2014) and completed his Ph.D. with us (2017). Later he moved to USA (2018-2021), where he has been working as a postdoctoral researcher associate with Dr. Robert S. Paton in the Department of Chemistry at Colorado State University.
Recently, he has been appointed as a Juan de la Cierva-Incorporation Fellow for the Science and Innovation Spanish Ministry to work together with Prof. Gimeno at the ISQCH (April 2022).
Welcome back to Zaragoza! Welcome back at home!
Last Friday, Maru joined the evaluation committee of Ane García’s Dissertation at the University of the Basque Country (UPV), together with the other two members of the jury, Dr. Svetlana Tsogoeva (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany) and Dr. Raúl San Martín (UPV, Bilbao).
The Thesis has been supervised by Dr. Claudio Palomo (UPV) and Dr. Antonia Mielgo (UPV), and focuses on the advances made in the research and application of a type of organocatalysts widely studied within the Asymmetric Catalysis and Chemical Synthesis Research Group where the doctoral student has completed her PhD studies: bifunctional Brønsted base catalysts derived from amino acids. Proof of the relevance and importance of these results is that they have been translated into scientific publications in high-level international journals (CEJ 2021, 2483 and EJOC 2021, 3604).
Congratulations to Ane and their supervisors, and of course, all the best for her in the future!
Thanks Claudio and Antonia for the invitation! It made me particularly happy because I did my Doctoral Thesis on the synthesis of beta-lactams and Palomo was a referent on this subject in the international scientific scenario, so he was one of the first scientists I had the honor of meeting.
A pleasure to be in San Sebastian with all of you, surrounded by nice people, nice science, nice food and many laughs and nice memories!
Few days ago, we had the pleasure of having the visit of an excellent scientist and better person, our good friend José Alemán (UAM).
Territorial section for Aragon of the RSEQ invited him to the annually organized Debate on the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. This time to talk about the one awarded in 2021 to List and MacMillan for their contributions to the development to the “Enantioselective Organocatalysis”.
Raquel was in charge of interviewing the guest in a pleasant and fun environment. We all really enjoyed the stories and anecdotes that both told us. Thanks José for coming to Zaragoza! You are always welcome!
Sandra and Maru were playing with children in the CEIP Bilingüe Foro Romano (Cuarte de Huerva) and Maru in the CEIP Pintor Pradilla (Villanueva de Gállego), respectively. Everybody enjoyed a lot!!
Last February 16th, the scientists from ISQCH Elena Cerrada, Eugenia Marqués-López, Raquel Lumbreras, Fernando Lahoz and José María Fraile participated in the Global Women Breakfast (IUPAC) conducted by Beatriz Latre. This is an event that happens each year in conjunction with the United Nations Day of Women and Girls in Science. The aim is to celebrate the accomplishments of Women in Science and to inspire younger generations to pursue STEM careers.
More than 50 teenagers came to the Faculty of Science and many others from different cities of Spain attended the session online. We hope they enjoyed as much as we did sharing with them our personal experiences throughout our careers. We tried to transmit them our passion and enthusiasm for Science and Chemistry.
Beatriz, thank you for inviting me. It has been a pleasure and an honor for me!
Horizons in Asymmetric Organocatalysis: En Route to the Sustainability and New Applications, Ardevines, S.; Marqués-López, E.; Herrera, R. P. Catalyst 2022, 12(1), 101. https://doi.org/10.3390/catal12010101. Special Issue “Organocatalysis:
Advances, Opportunity, and Challenges“
Abstract. Nowadays, the development of new enantioselective processes is highly relevant in chemistry due to the relevance of chiral compounds in biomedicine (mainly drugs) and in other fields, such as agrochemistry, animal feed, and flavorings. Among them, organocatalytic methods have become an efficient and sustainable alternative since List and MacMillan pioneering contributions were published in 2000. These works established the term asymmetric organocatalysis to label this area of research, which has grown exponentially over the last two decades. Since then, the scientific community has attended to the discovery of a plethora of organic reactions and transformations carried out with excellent results in terms of both reactivity and enantioselectivity. Looking back to earlier times, we can find in the literature a few examples where small organic molecules and some natural products could act as effective catalysts. However, with the birth of this type of catalysis, new chemical architectures based on amines, thioureas, squaramides, cinchona alkaloids, quaternary ammonium salts, carbenes, guanidines and phosphoric acids, among many others, have been developed. These organocatalysts have provided a broad range of activation modes that allow privileged interactions between catalysts and substrates for the preparation of compounds with high added value in an enantioselective way. Here, we briefly cover the history of this chemistry, from our point of view, including our beginnings, how the field has evolved during these years of research, and the road ahead.
Key words. chirality; enantioselective; green chemistry; organocatalysis; sustainability
CONGRATULATIONS!!
Investigation of Squaramide Catalysts in the Aldol Reaction En Route to Funapide, Canudo-Sonsona, I. G.; Vicenzi, A.; Guidotti, M.; Bisag, G. D..; Fochi, M.; Herrera, R. P.; Bernardi, L. Eur. J. Org. Chem. 2022, e202101254. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejoc.202101254.
Keywords: Aldol reaction · Asymmetric catalysis · Funapide · Organocatalysis · Squaramide
Our group has just received an accesit of Prizes “Tercer Milenio” in the category of Research and Future for our work in organoasymmetric catalysis oriented to industrial applications. Last Thursday, together with the other 14 awarded projects and careers, Raquel picked the prize up from Guillermo Ríos, head of Avanza during the ceremony celebrated in the Rectorate of the University of Zaragoza. We are very happy!!!
Herrera-OrganoCatalisis Asimétrica Group 