Premios GEQO 2018

Prof. Agustí Lledós was born in Barcelona (Spain) in 1955. He obtained a Ph. D. in Chemistry from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) in 1984. He entered into the field or organometallic chemistry during a postdoctoral stay at the “Laboratoire de Chimie Thèorique” of the “Université de Paris-Sud” (1985-86) with Prof. Y. Jean. Then, he returned to UAB (1987), where he started a research group devoted to the computational study of organometallic reactivity and reaction mechanisms of homogeneous catalysis. He was appointed Full Professor of Physical Chemistry at UAB in 1994. Guided by a strong motivation to use computational techniques to do “real” chemistry, the UAB group has pioneered the collaborative experimental-theoretical research in organometallic chemistry and has had an important role in the introduction and expansion of the computational chemistry into the Spanish organometallic community. A significant part of the Dr. Lledós’ scientific production (more than 300 papers) has been published in collaboration with experimental groups. He has also contributed to the formation of researchers in theoretical organometallic chemistry (25 Ph. D. Thesis supervised and training in computational techniques of more than 30 experimental researchers). Some of the main scientific achievements of Dr. Lledós are his contributions to the transition metal hydride and dihydrogen chemistry, cross-coupling processes, gold-catalyzed homogeneous catalysis, asymmetric catalysis and organometallic reactivity in water. He has served (2012-2017) as vice-president of the Spanish Chemical Society (RSEQ). In 2008 he was awarded with the RSEQ-Bruker Award for Physical Chemistry.

Prof. J. M. López-de-Luzuriaga was born in Logroño (La Rioja) and attended University of Zaragoza where he received his Diploma in Chemistry in 1990. He obtained the PhD degree under the supervision of Prof. Antonio Laguna and Prof. Eduardo Fernández from the University of La Rioja in 1994, where he was given an Extraordinary Doctorate Award. In 1996 he received the Alexander von Humboldt grant and he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Hubert Schmidbaur at the Technical University of Munich. In 1998 and 2001 he spent several months in the Texas A&M University under the guidance of Prof. John P. Fackler, Jr and in 2000, López-de-Luzuriaga was promoted to Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and Distinguished Professor in 2009 in the University of La Rioja. His research interests focus on the design and synthesis of coordination and organometallic compounds, mainly of group 11 metals. Particularly, emphasis has been place on the experimental and computational studies of the intermetallic interactions among different metals and the luminescence of complexes that contain them. Also properties associated to this behavior as vapochromism or mechanochromism have been subjects of his studies. He has co-authored more than 160 publications in international chemistry journals (16 in Organometallics, 9 JACS, 27 Inorganic Chemistry, etc.), reviews, book chapters, and two patents.

Javier Francos (Oviedo, Spain, 1983) obtained his degree in Chemistry at the University of Oviedo (2006) and ended his PhD studies under the supervision of Prof. José Gimeno and Dr. Victorio Cadierno (2011) working into new ruthenium catalyzed reactions in aqueous media. He obtained two awards for this work: The «Premio Extraordinario de Doctorado» of the University of Oviedo and the «Prize of San Alberto Magno 2011 to the best Thesis» given by the Colegio Oficial de Químicos de Asturias y León. After that, he did a postdoctoral stay of one year at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain, 2011-2012) under the supervision of Prof. José Luis Mascareñas working in the development of new enantioselective reactions between allenes and dienes. The following years (2012-2015) he moved to the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow, UK), where he obtained a position as Research Assistant under the supervision of Dr. CharlesO’Hara developing new bimetallic complexes and their employ in organic synthesis. At the end of 2015 summer, he rejoined the University of Oviedo, first as a research associate and from January 2016 to December 2017 as a “Juan de la Cierva” fellow. Currently, he is a collaborating professor in the same university. His current research interests cover the chemistry of transition-metal complexes bearing bifunctional ligands, along with their catalytic applications in non-convectional solvents, and the enantioselective functionalization of unsaturated molecules to obtain high added value products. Along these years, he has published 39 articles (including 6 reviews) in international chemistry journals (3 of them in Organometallics).