Dr. Juan M. Sarria Toro, Postdoctoral Researcher in Prof. Echavarren’s group, has received the ETH Medal Award for his Thesis entitled ‘Discovery, Development and Study of Carbenoid Mediated Reactions from Olefin Metathesis to Cyclopropanation’ developed at ETH under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Peter Chen.

On March, he joined the group of Prof. Echavarren where he is developing new chiral mononuclear gold complexes for enantioselective catalysis. Additionally, his work attempts to better understand and take advantage of the interaction between Lewis acids (for instance boron) and the gold center when using ambiphilic-type ligands.