New Horizons in Modern Catalysis

Montserrat Diéguez studied chemistry at the Rovira i Virgili University (URV) in Tarragona (Spain), where she earned her Ph.D. in 1997, working in the group of Prof. C. Claver. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship where she worked with Prof. R.H. Crabtree at Yale University, in New Haven (USA), she returned to Tarragona in 1999 and accepted a lectureship position at the URV, becoming part of the permanent staff in 2002. In 2011 she was promoted to full Professor in Inorganic Chemistry at the URV. She has been involved in more than 60 research projects in the fields of organometallic chemistry, steroselective synthesis, and asymmetric catalysis. She is the author/co-author of more than 150 articles in SCI-indexed journals and book chapters, and of several contributions to conferences. She received distinction from the Generalitat de Catalunya for the promotion of University Research in 2004 and from the URV in 2008. She has also been awarded the ICREA Academia Prize from the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies 2009–14 and 2015–20, for research excellence, facilitating research priority dedication. Her main research interests are focused on the sustainable design, synthesis, and screening of highly active and selective chiral catalysts for reactions of interest to the biological, pharmaceutical, and organic nanotechnological industries. Her areas of interest include organometallic chemistry, stereoselective synthesis, and asymmetric catalysis, using combinatorial and biotechnological approaches. Originally from Gijón (Spain), Eva received both her MSci degree in Chemistry and her Ph.D. degree from the Universidad de Oviedo (Spain) in 1998 and 2002 respectively. The latter under the supervision of Victor Riera and Julio Perez. After a three-year postdoctoral period at the University of Strathclyde working with Robert Mulvey, as a Marie Curie Fellow, in 2006 she took up a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and Lectureship there. Subsequently she was promoted to Senior lecturer in 2010, Reader in 2011 and as a Professor in 2013. In 2019 Eva moved to the University of Bern where she is currently a Professor in Inorganic Chemistry at the at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. She has published over 140 peer-reviewed papers in the area and to date her research has been recognised with several prestigious prizes including the 2016 SRUK Emerging Talent Award, which honours the most promising Spanish scientist in the UK under 40, and more recently by the 2017 RSC Corday-Morgan Prize awarded to the most meritorious contributions to Chemistry. An elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) and the European Academy of Sciences her research has been supported by the SNF, EPSRC, UK Charities, EU (ERC-Stg-2011), industry and governmental bodies. She sits on the International Advisory Boards of Eur. J. Inorg. Chem, Organometallics, Chem Catalysis, Chemistry Open and Asian J. Org. Chem and she has presented over 100 invited lectures worldwide. Mónica was born and raised in Valladolid, Spain. She obtained her BS degree in Chemistry at the University of Valladolid in 2005, and her PhD in 2011 under the supervision of Prof. Pablo Espinet and Prof. Juan Casares. As a graduate student, she worked in the area of organometallic chemistry, investigating the mechanisms of different palladium-catalyzed processes. Early 2012, she joined the research group of Prof. Melanie Sanford at the University of Michigan where she focused on the synthesis and reactivity of high-valent palladium(IV) complexes. In October 2015, she began her independent career as Junior Group Leader at Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ). Her current interests, although varied, are connected by the common theme of developing more sustainable approaches for the synthesis of organic molecules using fundamental organometallic chemistry. During her time at ICIQ, Mónica has received different awards and honors including the JSP Fellowship (Bürgenstock Conference 2018) or being selected as one of the “Talented 12” of 2018 by Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society (ACS). She is also involved in outreach activities to increase the visibility of women in Science.