Challenges in Catalysis VII

Naomi Szulc received a B.Sc. in Chemistry from the University of Southampton and went on to work as an industrial chemist investigating coatings and adhesives for the security sector. She joined PhosphonicS in 2019 as a scientist and has been involved in the product development of functionalised silicas and with clients to develop solutions for metal recovery.

Natalie Fey is an Associate Professor in Chemistry at the University of Bristol. Her group use computational approaches as a driver for scientific discovery, with a particular focus on organometallic catalysis. She is German, but lives and works in the UK, completing a B.Sc. (Chemistry and Economics, 1997) and a Ph.D. (2001) at Keele University, followed by postdoc positions with Rob Deeth at Warwick University and with Guy Orpen and Jeremy Harvey, and later also Guy Lloyd-Jones, at Bristol. She was awarded a prestigious EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship in 2007 to start her independent career, worked with CatSci on ligand design (2012-14) and was appointed as lecturer in 2015, promoted to senior lecturer in 2018 and to associate professor in 2021. She is the programme director for Bristol’s programmes in Chemistry with Scientific Computing and an Associate Editor for Organometallics.

Nicholas Turner is Professor of Chemical Biology, Director of the Centre of Excellence in Biocatalysis (CoEBio3) and co-Director of SYNBIOCHEM. His research interests span biocatalysis, directed evolution of enzymes and synthetic biology. He has published >400 papers/patents with an h-index of 76 and ca. 20,000 citations. He is a member of several Scientific Advisory Boards and consults widely. He has received many awards for his research achievements and currently holds an ERC Advanced Grant (2017-2022). In May 2020 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and in 2021 he became a Member of Academia Europea (MAE).

Prof. Christophe Copéret (CCH) was trained in chemistry and chemical engineering at CPE Lyon, France, and carried out a PhD in chemistry with Prof. E.i. Negishi (Purdue University, USA – 1991-1996), where he investigated the synthesis of complex molecules via Pd-catalyzed carbonylation reactions. After a postdoctoral stay with Prof. K.B. Sharpless (Scripps), CCH was offered a research position at CNRS in 1998 and was promoted CNRS Research Director in 2008. Since 2010, CCH is Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zürich. His scientific interest lies at the frontiers of molecular, material and surface chemistry as well as NMR spectroscopy with the aims to design molecularly-defined solid catalysts through detailed mechanistic studies and structure-activity relationships. CCH is a member of the Board of the Swiss Chemical Society and EuChemS, the Chair of SwissCat+ and an Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Graduated in 2011 from University of Manchester with a year in Industry at Pfizer, Sandwich in Medicinal Chemistry. Carried out PhD for Prof. Nick Turner and Prof. Jonathan Clayden at the University of Manchester, working on the asymmetric synthesis of atropisomers using biocatalysis. In 2015 I worked at Johnson Matthey, Cambridge, working on innovative catalytic solutions to customer projects, both chemocatalysis and biocatalysis. In 2021 I moved to AstraZeneca, Macclesfield in the Biocatalysis team, implementing biocatalytic steps into chemical processes. I recently moved to AstraZeneca, Cambridge, where I am developing their HTE capability.