PhD Day 2020

Pilar Calleja completed her B.Sc. at the University of Barcelona. In 2012, she received the Master of Synthesis and Catalysis Extraordinary Award from the Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona. She joined the group of Prof. Antonio M. Echavarren at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ), where she obtained her PhD (2017) working on homogeneous gold catalysis. Then, she moved to Heidelberg (Germany) to work as postdoctoral researcher in the Catalysis Research Laboratory (CaRLa), where she was studying the reductive hydrolysis of nitriles. Pilar joined Wiley-VCH in 2019 as an Assistant Editor for Chemistry—A European Journal

Max García-Melchor received his B.Sc. in Chemistry and M.Sc. in Theoretical Chemistry from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. After obtaining his PhD in Chemistry in 2012, he joined the group of Prof. Nuria López at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ), where he conducted postdoctoral research that allowed him to underpin the mechanisms and factors that govern several catalytic processes on metal oxides surfaces. In November 2016, he took up an Assistant Professorship in Chemical Energy Systems in the School of Chemistry in Trinity College Dublin, where he leads the Computational Catalysis and Energy Materials (CCEM) Group. His research group at Trinity focuses on the theoretical description of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalytic reactions for energy-related applications, and the design of more efficient materials for the development of energy conversion and storage technologies.

Michael Parmentier received his PhD degree in Chemistry from the Université de Montréal (Canada) under the supervision of Prof. Hélène Lebel working on metal-catalyzed methylenation and enantioselective aziridination reactions. After a postdoctoral research with Prof. Andreas Pfaltz working on the synthesis and application of new iridium catalysts, Michael joined Roche in Basel as scientific collaborator. Since 2012, he is a principal scientist in research and development in Novartis, where he is developing robust and efficient chemical processes for the preparation of drug substances.

Adela Carrillo is a scientific officer of European Research Council (ERC) in Brussels (Belgium). Her background  is in material science, in which she earned her PhD degree from the University of Alicante working on the development and characterization of mesoporous silica materials. Adela was a COFUND postdoctoral fellow in the group of Prof. Miquel Pericas at the ICIQ from 2016 to 2017.

Prof. Echavarren obtained his PhD at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid in 1982. Since 1992 he is a full professor at Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, where he heads the Research Group on Organometallic Chemistry Directed Towards Organic Synthesis. Since 2004 he is working as Group Leader at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ). Since 2018, he is the President of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (RSEQ).