New Frontiers in Synthetic Chemistry

John F. Bower obtained his MSci degree in 2003 from the University of Bristol, where he remained to study for his PhD degree (2007) under the guidance of Professor Timothy Gallagher. He then undertook postdoctoral appointments with Professor Michael Krische at the University of Texas at Austin (2007-2008) and Professor Timothy Donohoe at the University of Oxford (2008-2010). In 2010, he was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and commenced his independent career at the University of Bristol. The group’s research interests lie broadly within the area of synthetic chemistry, with a focus on N-heterocyclic methodologies and metal-catalysed processes. Bower’s research has been recognized by a number of awards, including the 2013 Royal Society of Chemistry Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize, the 2015 Royal Society of Chemistry Hickinbottom Award and a 2016 Philip Leverhulme Prize.

Susannah obtained her MChem degree from the University of York in 2003, having spent her final year on exchange at the Université Joseph Fourier. She remained at the University of York for her Ph.D. studies, working under the supervision of Prof. Peter O’Brien on aspects of novel aziridine chemistry. After postdoctoral positions with Prof. Cyrille Kouklovsky at the Université Paris-Sud XI and with Prof. David Procter at the University of Manchester, Susannah was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt research fellowship to join the Technische Universität München, hosted by Prof. Thorsten Bach. In 2014, Susannah started her independent career at Lancaster University. Her research focuses on synthetic organic photochemistry, with particular emphasis on the synthesis of four-membered rings.

Following his D.Phil in organic synthesis at Oxford University and Post Doc at Indiana University Will joined AZ at Macclesfield in 2006. He has developed a strong track record in process design and scale up working from grams to tonnes, including biocatalysis and flow chemistry. For the last three years he has been working in the area of New Modalities with a recent secondment in the Advanced Drug Delivery team, designing and synthesising new materials for the intracellular delivery of mRNA. Will is currently working on AstraZeneca’s antibody drug conjugate (ADC) platform, with accountability for early phase payload synthesis. In this role he is developing the commercial routes and processes for ADC payloads, whilst supporting the manufacture of clinical trial material. He is an Honorary Lecturer at the University of Manchester in the Division of Pharmacy presently supporting a curriculum review.
 

Daniele obtained his PhD at the University of Sheffield under the supervision of Professor Iain Coldham (2010). After postdoctoral studies with Professors Magnus Rueping (RWTH Aachen University) and 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.

Franziska Schoenebeck has been a Full Professor at the Institute of Organic Chemistry at RWTH Aachen University since the summer of 2016. Professor Schoenebeck was born and raised in Berlin, Germany. From 2001-2004, she studied Chemistry at the Technical University of Berlin and the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, UK. She undertook her PhD in synthetic organic chemistry in the group of Prof. John A. Murphy in Glasgow, Uk. In 2008 she moved to California to work with Prof. K. N. Houk at UCLA, where she was involved in computational studies of organic reactivity. In 2010, she joined the faculty of the ETH Zürich as an Assistant Professor. In 2013, she was appointed Associate Professor at the Institute of Organic Chemistry at RWTH Aachen University and promoted to Full Professor in 2016. She is the recipient of the Novartis Chemistry Lectureship (2016-2017), an ERC Starting Grant, the 2014 'Dozentenpreis' of the German Chemical Industry Fund, the 2014 ORCHEM Prize by the German Chemical Society, the 2014 Marcial Moreno Lectureship by the Spanish Royal Chemistry Society, the 2014 JPOC Award for Early Excellence in Physical Organic Chemistry and the ADUC Prize 2012. Her research program is based at the interface of synthetic organic, mechanistic and computational chemistry with a strong emphasis in homogeneous metal catalysis.