Andrew Cooper, Editor-in-chief
University of Liverpool, UK
I am a Nottingham graduate (1991) and obtained my Ph.D there in 1994. After my Ph.D, I held a 1851 Fellowship and a Royal Society NATO Fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, and then a Ramsay Memorial Research Fellowship at the University of Cambridge.
In 1999, I was appointed as a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in Liverpool. In 2007, I was the founding Director of the Centre for Materials Discovery—the forerunner of the MIF—which cemented a long-term strategic collaboration between Unilever and the University of Liverpool. I was Head of Chemistry and then the first Head of the School of Physical Sciences in the period 2007-2012, during which time I served on the University Council.
In 2017, I co-founded a spin-out company, Porous Liquid Technologies, with collaborators at Queens University Belfast, based on an entirely new class of material, porous liquids, invented in the UK as part of an EPSRC-funded project (Nature, 2015, 527, 216).
I led the bid to establish the Materials Innovation Factory (MIF) via the UK Research Partnerships Infrastructure Fund and I am its first Academic Director. I am also the Director of the £10 M Leverhulme Centre for Functional Materials Design. My main research interests are organic materials, supramolecular chemistry, and materials for energy production and molecular separation. This is underpinned by a strong technical interest in high-throughput methods and robotics.
A unifying theme in my research is the close fusion of computational prediction and experiment to discover new materials with step-change properties (Nature, 2011, 474, 367; Nature, 2017, 543, 657). This has involved close collaboration with Graeme Day, Professor of Chemical Modelling at the University of Southampton.
I was elected to the Royal Society in 2015. I have been awarded the Macro Group Young Researchers Award (2002), the RSC Award in Environmentally Friendly Polymers (2005), the McBain Medal (2007), the Corday-Morgan Prize (2009), the Macro Group Award (2010), a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, the Tilden Prize (2014), and the American Chemical Society Doolittle Award (2014). I was also the 2015 MIT-Georgia Pacific Lecturer in Organic Chemistry.
In both 2011 and 2014, I was named in a Thomson Reuters list as one of the Top 100 materials scientists of the last decade. I was also named in the more recent 2017 Clarivate Highly Cited list in the field of chemistry. I was awarded an ERC Advanced Investigators grant in 2012 (RobOT). In 2015, I was appointed as a Consultant Professor inHauzhong University of Science & Technology, China. I was also appointed as an Honorary Professor at East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, in 2017.
Vincent Artero, Associate editor
University Grenoble Alpes and CEA, France
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6148-8471
Born in 1973, I am a former pupil of the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Ulm; D/S 93) and studied at the University Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6). I received my Ph.D. degree in 2000 under the supervision of Prof. A. Proust and Prof. P. Gouzerh. My doctoral work dealt with organometallic derivatives of polyoxometalates.
After a postdoctoral stay at the University of Aachen (RWTH) with Prof. U. Kölle, I joined the group of Prof. M. Fontecave in Grenoble in 2001 where I obtained a position in the Life Science Division of the CEA (now included in the Fundamental Research Division of CEA).
Since 2016, I have led the SolHyCat group as Research Director in the Laboratory of Chemistry and Biology of Metals (a research unit cooperated by CEA, CNRS and Univ. Grenoble Alpes) in Grenoble.
My research interests are in bioinspired chemistry and artificial photosynthesis. My group targets the structural and functional modelisation of hydrogenases, the design of artificial organometallic proteins and the design of novel nanomaterials for hydrogen photo- and electro-production, hydrogen oxidation and CO2 reduction.
I received the "Grand Prix Mergier-Bourdeix de l'Académie des Sciences" in 2011. In 2012, I was granted a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). I currently act as Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the ARCANE Excellence Laboratory Network (LABEX) for bio-driven chemistry in Grenoble and co-chair of the French research Network (GDR) on solar fuels.
Christopher Barner-Kowollik, Associate Editor
Queensland University of Technology, Australia
A PhD graduate in chemistry from Göttingen University, Germany, Christopher joined the University of New South Wales in early 2000 rising to lead its Centre for Advanced Macromolecular Design in 2006 as one of its directors.
He returned to Germany to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in 2008, where he established and led a German Research Council-funded Centre of Excellence in soft matter synthesis and served as the Head of School of the School of Chemical Technology and Polymer Chemistry at the KIT. Following a period as an adjunct professor and collaborator with QUT, he moved to QUT in early 2017 and established QUT’s Soft Matter Materials Laboratory.
Christopher developed and supported highly collaborative large teams – often across continents – in a research program focused on the fundamentals of highly wavelength-resolved photochemical transformations and their application to macromolecular synthesis based on the precision photochemistry paradigm. His research efforts are underpinned by a strong rooting in chemical reaction kinetics and mechanisms. He has authored over 780 peer-reviewed publications in leading journals (cited over 47,000 times) and was a plenary and invited speaker at over 280 conferences and research institutions.
His research achievements have been recognised by an array of national and international awards. These include the coveted Centenary Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Belgian Polymer Medal, the United Kingdom Macro Medal, the European Polymer Federation Prize as well as national awards by the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, the Royal Society of New South Wales, an ARC Professorial Fellowship and an Laureate Fellowship. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute.
Luis M. Campos, Associate editor
Columbia University, USA
I was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, and moved at the age of 11 to Los Angeles, California. I received a B.Sc. in Chemistry from CSU Dominguez Hills in 2001, and a Ph.D. from the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at UCLA in 2006 under the tutelage of Miguel A. Garcia-Garibay and K. N. Houk. After my graduate studies in Physical Organic Chemistry, I switched to Polymer Chemistry, working in the laboratory of Craig J. Hawker at the Materials Research Laboratory. At Columbia, my group’s research interests lie in the fundamentals of Physical Macromolecular Chemistry, with interests in polymer synthesis, self-assembly, and organic electronic materials.
Lin X. Chen, Associate editor
Northwestern University, USA
I am a Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University and a Senior Chemist in Argonne National Laboratory. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. After my postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley, I joined Argonne as a staff scientist. In 2007, I joined Northwestern University.
My research is focused on fundamental light-matter interactions of different solar energy conversion platforms, including excited state molecular structural dynamics in photocatalytic processes and photovoltaic materials; understanding roles of ultrafast and coherent electronic and atomic motions in in photochemical reactions, and functional structural dynamics of biomacromolecules on multiple spatial and temporal scales. My main tools for research are ultrafast laser and X-ray spectroscopy/scattering and other property/structural methods in collaborations with theorists and chemists making molecules and materials.
I was awarded one of the highly cited scientists in 2019 by the Web of Science, with more than 230 publications, and over 200 invited lectures. I have been members of the Research Council for the Chemical, Biological and Geological Sciences Division, Basic Energy Science, US Department of Energy, the Advisory Editorial Board of Journal of Physical Chemistry and Chemical Physics Letters, Senior Editor of ACS Energy Letters, and the International Science Advisory Committee for π-Functional Materials. I am an AAAS Fellow and have won distinguished performance award at Argonne. Find out more about the Chen Group.
Graeme Day, Associate editor
University of Southampton, UK
I was born in Canada and studied chemistry, mathematics and computing science at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax before moving to the University of Oxford for a Masters in theoretical chemistry and a PhD in computational chemistry at University College London.
After postdoctoral work in the Pfizer Institute for Pharmaceutical Materials at the University of Cambridge, I began my independent research as a Royal Society University Research Fellow, also in Cambridge, spending most of my time working on modelling pharmaceutical materials and computational methods for interpreting terahertz spectra of molecular crystals. I moved to the University of Southampton in 2012, where I am now Professor of Chemical Modelling.
I was awarded a European Research Council Starting Grant for the 'Accelerated design and discovery of novel molecular materials via global lattice energy minimisation' (ANGLE). This grant shifted the focus of my research to functional materials, including porous crystals and organic electronics.
In 2020, I was awarded an ERC Synergy grant 'Autonomous Discovery of Advanced Materials' (ADAM) with Professors Andrew Cooper (Liverpool) and Kerstin Thurow (Rostock) to integrate computational predictions, chemical space exploration with automation and robotics in the materials discovery lab. I continue to work in the area of pharmaceutical solid form modelling, have worked on methods for NMR crystallography and have a developing interest in applying machine learning methods for accelerating simulations, analysing energy landscapes and generating ideas.
Mircea Dinca, Associate editor
MIT, USA
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1262-1264
I grew up in Romania and moved to the US for my Bachelor's degree at Princeton University, where I graduated with a BA in Chemistry in 2003. Following graduate studies in Inorganic Chemistry at UC Berkeley, I moved to MIT for a postdoctoral appointment in 2008, and was offered an Assistant Professor position in the Department of Chemistry at MIT starting in 2010. I was promoted to Associate Professor in 2015 and offered tenure in 2017. My research interests lie in the synthesis of new multifunctional materials for applications in electrical and electronic devices, heterogeneous catalysis, and various uses in clean and renewable energy. In recognition of my group's research I have been awarded the Alan T. Waterman Award from the NSF in 2016 and the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry in 2018, among several others.
Mohamed Eddaoudi, Associate Editor
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
I am Ibn Alhaytham Distinguished Professor of Chemical Science, at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I was selected every year from 2014 to 2023 as Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers and the world’s most influenced scientific minds (2014). I have published over 350 publications with over 97000 citations and have a h-index= 121 (google Scholar). I also have over 50 granted patents.
I was awarded the Kuwait Prize, field of Chemistry (April 2024), the Almaraii Prize for Distinguished Scientist (November 2020) and the Abdul Hameed Shoman Prize for Arab Researchers, topic 'Renewable Energy'. (September 2019).
My research interests’ are aimed at developing new strategies for Reticular Chemistry, the rational design and construction of functional solid state materials. Design and synthesis of functional porous solids for Energy and Environmental Sustainability: Hydrogen storage, Methane storage, CO2 capture and Direct Air Capture (DAC). Design and synthesis of functional Adsorbents and Membranes, proffering energy-efficient and cost-effective Gas Separations.
François Gabbaï, Associate Editor
Texas A&M University, USA
I was born in France and attended the University of Bordeaux before moving to UT Austin where I became a PhD student with Alan Cowley. Upon completion of my Ph.D. in 1994, I joined the group of Hubert Schmidbaur at the Technical University of Munich, first as a postdoctoral fellow and later as an Habilitand. Upon completion of my Habilitation in 1998, I moved to Texas A&M University where I now hold the Arthur E. Martell Chair of Chemistry.
My research interests revolve around the chemistry of p-block elements and late transition metals with applications in anion recognition, anion transport, and catalysis. I am a Fellow of the American Chemical Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the recipient of the 2009 North American Dalton Lectureship. In 2016, I also received the ACS F. Albert Cotton Award in Synthetic Inorganic Chemistry.
Subi George, Associate editor
Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore, India
I was born on January 1st, 1977 in a quaint little village in the south Indian state of Kerala. I am a Professor and Associate Chair of the New Chemistry Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore, India. I obtained my PhD degree at the National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology, India in 2004 and during 2005-2008 I was a post-doctoral fellow at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.
I am currently leading an Organic Materials and Supramolecular Chemistry group at JNCASR. My current research interests focus on Organic Responsive and Adaptive Materials, Functional Supramolecular Polymers, Living and Non-equilibrium supramolecular polymerization, Supramolecular Chirality and Organic optoelectronic materials.
I am the recipient of the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar (SSB) Prize for Science and Technology from the Government of India in the Chemical Sciences Category for the year 2020. I was also the recipient of Swaranjayanti Fellowship from Department of Science and Technology of Government of India (2017), Asian Photochemistry Association (APA) Young Scientist award (2015), NASI-SCOPUS Young Scientist Award in Chemistry (2015), Chemical Research Society of India Bronze Medal (2015) and Materials Research Society of India Medal (2013).
In 2011-2013 I was a Young Associate of the Indian Academy of Sciences and in 2019 I was elected as a Fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences. I am currently a member of the Editorial Advisory Boards of Chemistry of Materials (ACS), Material Horizons (RSC), Chem (Cell) and Organic Materials (Thieme).
Ryan Gilmour, Associate editor
University of Münster, Germany
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3153-6065
I was born in Ayrshire, Scotland and studied chemistry at the University of St Andrews working with Prof. David O´Hagan. Upon completion of my Masters degree, I moved to the University of Cambridge to complete a PhD in total synthesis under the direction of Prof. Andrew B. Holmes.
Following post-doctoral research fellowships at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung (with Prof. Alois Fürstner) and the ETH Zürich (with Prof. Peter H. Seeberger), I was appointed as the Alfred-Werner-Assistant-Professor of Synthetic Organic Chemistry at the ETH. In 2013 I joined the WWU Münster where I currently hold the Chair of Organic Chemistry & CiMIC Professorship of Chemical Biology.
My group´s research interests are based on translating fundamental principles of structure and reactivity to applications in catalysis and biomedicine.
Physical organic chemistry is at the core of our entire research programme and drives innovation. We have strong interests in main group catalysis strategies to enable selective fluorination, the development of glycostructures for applications in chemical biology and medicine, and selective energy transfer photocatalysis.
I am a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and joined Chemical Science as an Associate Editor in August 2023.
Stephen Goldup, Associate editor
University of Birmingham, UK
I studied at the University of Oxford (MChem, Prof. Sir Jack Baldwin) and Imperial College (PhD, Prof. Tony Barrett) where my research focused on natural product synthesis, before moving to Edinburgh (PDRA, Prof. David Leigh) to apply my synthetic skills to interlocked molecules and molecular machines. In 2008 I took up my first independent research position at Queen Mary, University of London, first as a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow and then as a Royal Society Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer. In 2014 I moved to the University of Southampton where I was a Professor of Chemistry. I work with an outstanding group of young scientists demonstrating new applications of interlocked molecules in a range of areas including catalysis, materials, sensing and chemical biology. We are particularly interested in the applications of new forms of stereochemistry associated with the mechanical bond.
Jinlong Gong, Associate editor
Tianjin University, China
I studied chemical engineering and received my B.S. and M.S. degrees from Tianjin University and my Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon the completion of my postdoctoral research at Harvard University, I joined the faculty of chemical engineering at Tianjin University, where I currently hold a Pei Yang Chair Professorship. My research group works on heterogeneous catalysis and kinetics with a focus on catalytic conversions of small molecules, production of hydrogen energy, and syntheses and applications of nanostructured catalytic materials.
Zaiping Guo, Associate editor
The University of Adelaide, Australia
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3464-5301
I am a professor and an ARC Australian Laureate Fellow in the School of Chemical Engineering & Advanced Materials at the University of Adelaide. I received my doctorate degree from the University of Wollongong, Australia in 2003, followed by a postdoctoral work at University of Wollongong from 2004-2006.
I received successive promotions to Associate Professor in 2010, Professor in 2012 and Distinguished Professor in 2019 at the University of Wollongong. I then joined The University of Adelaide as a Top-talented Professor in March 2021.
The interests of my research team focus on the design and application of electrode materials and electrolyte for energy storage and conversion, including rechargeable batteries, hydrogen storage, and fuel cells. My field of expertise includes electrochemistry, charge transfer and transport kinetics, electrocatalysis, solid-state chemistry, and materials synthesis and characterization.
Christian Hackenberger, Associate editor
Leibniz-Institut für Molekulare Pharmakologie and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7457-4742
I was born in Osnabrück in Northern Germany and studied chemistry in Freiburg, Madison/WI, and Aachen. I obtained an MSc in 1999 with Samuel H Gellman and my PhD in 2003 with Carsten Bolm.
After my postdoctoral studies with Barbara Imperiali at MIT, I established my research group at the Freie Universität Berlin. In 2012, I was appointed Leibniz-Humboldt Professor of Chemical Biology at the FMP Berlin and the Humboldt University Berlin.I have long been fascinated by the structure and function of biomolecules, especially peptides and proteins.
In our group, we use various approaches from organic chemistry, biochemistry, and biophysics. These include, for instance, the development of chemoselective or bioorthogonal reactions or new cellular delivery strategies. With the chemical tools and probes in hand, we functionalize proteins and antibodies to generate protein-based therapeutics against cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and viral infections and cell-permeable antibodies for intracellular targeting.
In 2020, I co-founded the Munich-based company Tubulis, which engineers better tolerable cancer drugs, especially antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), using conjugation technologies from our lab, particularly the P5-labeling platform.
Recently, I received the Leonidas Zervas Award from the European Peptide Society (2018), the Xiaoyu Hu Memorial Award from the Chinese Peptide Society (2023), and the Protein and Peptide Astra Zeneca Award from the Royal Society (2023). In 2020, I was the first recipient of the Falling Walls Foundation Breakthrough of the Year award in the Life Sciences, which recognized our contributions to developing next-generation biopharmaceuticals.
Malika Jeffries-EL, Associate editor
Boston University, USA
I was born in Brooklyn, New York and attended Wellesley College for my Bachelor’s degree and The George Washington University for my masters and doctorate degrees. I then worked as a post-doctoral fellow under the direction of Professor Richard D. McCullough at Carnegie Mellon University, where I developed my interest in organic electronics.
I started my research group at Iowa State University and then moved it to Boston University in 2016. Since July 2020 I have also served as the Associate Dean of the Graduate School in Arts and Sciences. My research focuses on the design and synthesis of organic semiconductors for use in OLEDs and OPVs.
In recognition of my group’s research, I have received the 2012 Rising Star Award from the ACS Women Chemists Committee, the 2013 Iota Sigma Pi Agnes Fay Morgan Award, and the 2021 Percy Julian Award from the National Organization of Black Chemist and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE), among many others. I am also a Fellow of the American Chemical Society, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Prior to joining Chemical Science in 2022, I was an Associate Editor for the Journal of Materials Chemistry C 2013-2022.
Ning Jiao, Associate editor
Peking University, China
I received my bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Shandong University in 1999. I obtained my Ph.D. degree (2004) with Prof. Shengming Ma at Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry (SIOC). I then spent 2004-2006 as an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow with Prof. Manfred T. Reetz at Max Planck Institute für Kohlenforschung. In 2007, I joined the faculty at Peking University as an Associate Professor, I was promoted to Full Professor in 2010, and I am currently the Yangtze-river scholars distinguished Professor at Peking University.
My current research efforts are focused on: 1) New methodologies development in Atom-Incorporation Reactions mainly on oxygenation, nitrogenation, and halogenation reactions; 2) The first-row transition metal catalysis and the inert chemical bonds functionalization; 3) Bioactive compounds synthesis and drug discovery. I am a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and started my position as an Associate Editor for Chemical Science in January 2021.
Tanja Junkers, Associate editor
Monash University, Australia
I studied chemistry and graduated with a PhD in physical chemistry from Göttingen University, Germany, in 2006 and subsequently worked at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, at the Centre for Advanced Macromolecular Design as research associate. In 2008 I moved to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. In early 2010 I was appointed professor at Hasselt University, Belgium, where I founded the Polymer Reaction Design research group within the Institute for Materials Research.
In January 2018 I moved back to Australia where I became a full professor at Monash University in Melbourne, and since then I continue activities there. I remain a guest professor at Hasselt University and my group is currently active at both locations. My main research interests are precision polymer synthesis, use of continuous flow chemistry approaches, light-induced chemistries, polymer surface modification and investigations on kinetics and mechanisms of radical reactions.
Hemamala Karunadasa, Associate Editor
Stanford University, USA
I am an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and a Faculty Scientist at the SLAC National Lab. My group is invested in gaining synthetic control over extended ionic solids, with a focus on halide perovskites. We seek to both improve technologically important materials as well as to design new materials with unprecedented properties.
I was born in Sri Lanka and attended school in Colombo. I studied solid-state chemistry at Princeton University, receiving my A.B. in 2003. I moved to molecular inorganic chemistry for my Ph.D., which I received from UC Berkeley in 2009, and for my postdoctoral studies at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and at the California Institute of Technology.
As an associate editor, I look forward to receiving papers that provide fundamental insights into obtaining desirable properties from new materials.
Maja Köhn, Associate editor
University of Bonn, Germany
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8142-3504
I am a Full Professor for Molecular Cell Biology at the University of Bonn, Germany. Research in my group focuses on the development and application of tools using synthetic chemistry and molecular cell biology to study and target phosphatases in health and disease.
I studied chemistry at the University of Kiel and moved afterwards to the Max-Planck-Institute and the University in Dortmund, Germany, where I obtained my Ph.D. in 2005. After my postdoctoral work at Harvard University, I started my independent career in 2007 as a group leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany. Before moving to my current position at the University of Bonn, I held a Full Professor position at the University of Freiburg, Germany, from 2016 - 2024.
Yi-Tao Long, Associate Editor
Nanjing University, China
I am a Professor of Analytical Chemistry at Nanjing University. I received my B.S. in Chemistry at Shandong University in 1989 and obtained my Ph.D. under the supervision of Professor Hongyuan Chen from Nanjing University in 1998. After undertaking two-year postdoctoral studies at Heidelberg University, I worked at the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Alberta over 5 years in Canada. Following one more year of research at UC Berkeley, I started my independent career at the East China University of Science and Technology in 2007 where the concept of single-molecule interface has been developed.
My research focuses on the development of new electrochemical measurement methods to reveal the characteristics and dynamics of single entities, which involves the nanopore single molecule electroanalysis, biointerface spectroelectrochemistry and integrated biosensors. As an associate editor for Chemical Science, I expect to see the cutting-edge papers that lead to the frontiers of analytical science and electrochemistry.
James K McCusker, Associate editor
Michigan State University, USA
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5684-3117
I am Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Center of Research Excellence in Complex Materials (CORE-CM) at Michigan State University, where I have been teaching since 2001. Prior to this I was Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. I received my undergraduate from Bucknell University (1987) and my PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1992), then joined the University of North Carolina as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow, where I worked with Professor Thomas J. Meyer from 1992-94.
My group’s research revolves around the ultrafast excited-state dynamics of transition metal complexes – in particular as this relates to the development of solar energy conversion strategies – as well as the interplay between zero-field spin polarization and the physical and photophysical properties of molecular systems.
Thomas J Meade, Associate editor
Northwestern University, USA
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6202-1155
I am the Eileen M. Foell Professor of Cancer Research and Professor of Chemistry, Molecular Biosciences, Neurobiology & Physiology, and Radiology at Northwestern University, as well as the Director of the Center for Advanced Molecular Imaging. In my previous position at Caltech and the Beckman Institute I pioneered the development of the first bioactivated MR probes and new hand-held chips for DNA diagnostics. My research focuses on bioinorganic coordination chemistry and its applications in research, which include biological molecular imaging, transcription factor inhibitors and the development of electronic biosensors for the detection of DNA and proteins.
Paolo Melchiorre, Associate Editor
University of Bologna, Italy
I studied Chemistry at the University of Bologna (Italy), where I received the PhD in Chemistry in 2003, working in the area of asymmetric catalysis. In 2002, I spent a research period in Denmark at the “Center for Catalysis”, Århus University, where my studies centered on enantioselective organocatalysis. From 2003, I worked as a postdoctoral associate at the Industrial Chemistry Faculty of the Bologna University. In October 2007, I started my independent career as an Assistant Professor at Bologna University.
In September 2009, I joined the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ) in Tarragona (Spain) as an ICREA Professor and ICIQ Group Leader. In October 2022, I moved back to my Alma Mater as Professor of Chemistry at the University of Bologna (Department of Industrial Chemistry 'Toso Montanari').
My current scientific interests lie on the discovery and mechanistic elucidation of catalytic enantioselective strategies for chemical synthesis, mainly using photochemical and radical reactivity patterns. The final goal is to develop innovative catalytic methods to control reaction selectivity while reducing the environmental impact of chemical synthesis.
Gabriel Merino, Associate editor
Cinvestav Mérida, México
I am a Professor in the Applied Physics Department at Centro de Investigacion y de Estudios Avanzados Merida (Cinvestav Mérida), México. I studied at Universidad de las Americas Puebla (B. S. in Chemistry, 1997) and Cinvestav Zacatenco (Ph. D. in Chemistry, 2003) under the supervision of Alberto Vela.
I then joined the group of Gotthard Seifert and Thomas Heine at TU Dresden as a postdoctoral fellow before returning to México in 2005 to take up my first independent research position at the Universidad de Guanajuato. In 2012, I decided to move to Cinvestav Mérida where my research group is one of the most active groups in Theoretical and Computational Chemistry in México and Latin America.
I spent a couple of long research stays at Cornell University (Roald Hoffmann, 2005), and the University of the Basque Country (Jesus Ugalde, 2011). I am a member of the Mexican National Researcher System (Level 3) and a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences.
I have been awarded the Research Grant from the Academia Mexicana de Ciencias (2012), the Catedra Marcos Moshinsky (2012), the National Prize “Andres Manuel del Rio” in Chemistry from the Mexican Chemical Society (2017), the Walter Kohn Award (2018) from the International Center of Theoretical Physics, and the Moshinsky Medal (2019) from Institute of Physics (UNAM). The main research interests of my group are the prediction of new chemical entities and the study of central concepts of chemistry, such as chemical bonding and aromaticity.
Hans Renata, Associate Editor
Rice University, USA
I was born in Surabaya, Indonesia and moved to Singapore to complete my high school education when I was 14. I received my B.A. degree from Columbia University in 2008, and earned my Ph.D. from The Scripps Research Institute in 2013 under the guidance of Professor Phil S. Baran. After postdoctoral studies with Professor Frances H. Arnold at the California Institute of Technology, I started my independent career at The Scripps Research Institute (Florida) in 2016. In July 2022, I took a position at Rice University as a Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) scholar.
My group’s research foci are on enzyme catalysis, natural product chemistry and chemical biology. We are interested in the discovery and engineering of novel enzymes from natural product biosyntheses and in the development of chemoenzymatic strategies to prepare complex, bioactive natural products, as well as analogs for functional studies.
Hannah Shafaat, Associate Editor
University of California, Los Angeles, USA
I grew up in the town of Langley, Washington, USA, on beautiful Whidbey Island, and left to pursue my B.S. in Chemistry from Caltech in 2006 and my Ph.D. from University of California, San Diego, in 2011.
I then moved across the Atlantic to become a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow under the guidance of Wolfgang Lubitz at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany. I started my independent career in 2013 at The Ohio State University, where I was promoted to Associate Professor in 2019 and Professor in 2022. In 2023, I moved to UCLA.
My research interests center around bioinorganic chemistry. My research program emphasizes the study of small molecule activation reactions in metalloenzymes and their models, with applications to energy, environment, and human health. Our toolbox for understanding these processes includes an array of magnetic resonance techniques, such as pulsed EPR spectroscopy, vibrational spectroscopy, protein engineering, bioanalytical methods, and electronic structure analyses.
In recognition and support of my group’s research, I was awarded the NSF CAREER award in 2015 and the DOE Early Career award in 2017, along with the Sloan Fellowship in 2018.
Matt Sigman, Associate Editor
University of Utah, USA
I was born in Los Angeles, California in 1970. I received a B.S. in chemistry from Sonoma State University in 1992 before obtaining his Ph.D. in organometallic chemistry at Washington State University with Professor Bruce Eaton in 1996. I then moved to Harvard University to complete an NIH funded postdoctoral stint with Professor Eric Jacobsen.
In 1999, I joined the faculty of the University of Utah where my research group focused on developing a new synthetic methodology with an underlying interest in reaction mechanism. My research integrates the study/development of new chemical reactions with the invention of new data science approaches to reaction interrogation and optimisation.
My research efforts have been recognised 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, I have been recognised 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).
Dmitri Talapin, Associate editor
The University of Chicago, USA
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6414-8587
I am a professor in the Department of Chemistry and James Franck Institute at the University of Chicago. The interests of my research team focus on different aspects of chemistry and physics of inorganic nanomaterials. We use a broad family of nanostructures as building blocks for constructing functional materials.
In pursuit of this goal, we synthesize novel nanostructures, develop techniques for their self-assembly and integration in electronic and optoelectronic devices. I received my doctorate degree from the University of Hamburg, Germany in 2002, followed by a postdoctoral work at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center.
In 2005-2007, I was a staff scientist at the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and finally joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 2007. My accolades include Materials Research Society Outstanding Young Investigator Award, Top 100 Chemists of the Decade based on citation impact by Thompson Reuters, David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering, and a few others. I was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2014.
Toshiharu Teranishi, Associate editor
Kyoto University, Japan
I am a professor at Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University. I received my PhD from The University of Tokyo under the direction of Prof. Naoki Toshima in 1994, and spent seven and a half years at Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology as an Assistant Professor and an Associate Professor. In 2004, I moved to University of Tsukuba as a Full Professor, and moved to Kyoto University in 2011. Current research interests include precise structural control of inorganic nanomaterials and structure-specific functions for high-performance devices and photo-energy conversion. I am a vice president of the Society of Nano Science and Technology, Japan, and an associate member of Science Council of Japan.
Andrei Yudin, Associate editor
University of Toronto, Canada
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3170-9103
I received my bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Moscow State University in 1992. I then became a doctoral student at the University of Southern California (1992-1996) and later received postdoctoral training at the Scripps Research Institute (1996-1998).
Since 1998, I have been on the chemistry faculty at the University of Toronto. My lab attempts to solve some of the long-standing challenges in chemistry by creating and exploring amphoteric molecules. The structures developed by my students often defy logic because the corresponding molecules feature both nucleophilic and electrophilic nodes of reactivity. Some of the peptide macrocycle and boron technologies that emerged as a result of my lab's research have enabled the discovery of new bioactive molecules and led to the creation of spin-off companies.
I am a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and started my position as an Associate Editor for Chemical Science in December 2018.
