Isabel Arranz, a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Antonio M. Echavarren and Prof. Feliu Maseras, has successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled “Mechanistic Studies on Gold(I) and Gold(III) Catalytic Transformations” publicly on Thursday, October 24th. The members of the evaluation committee were Prof. José Manuel González (Universidad de Oviedo), Prof. Maria Besora (Universitat Rovira i Virgili), and Prof. Fedor Miloserdov (Wageningen University, the Netherlands).

Isabel Arranz de la Calle is from a small village in Segovia, Spain, called Vallelado, where she grew up before deciding to study chemistry at the University of Valladolid. She later pursued a Master’s Degree in Organic Chemistry at the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid. In her free time, she enjoys running, hiking, and engaging in sports in general, as well as singing, dancing, and playing music. She has received the FPI-SO scholarship for the development of her Doctoral Thesis.

Why did you become a scientist?

I have always been curious about how the world works. In particular, by doing research in chemistry you get to unveil the atomic scale reasons of day-to-day macroscopic observations, and I find that fascinating.

What do you want to achieve as a scientist?

I would like to contribute to more sustainable processes and accessing new molecules in order to help developing possible new medicines.

What is your thesis about?

My thesis covers the mechanistic insights on catalytic processes that take place under the action of gold.

What applications can your thesis have in the future?

I hope my thesis can serve as a foundation to help improving existing synthetic methods or discovering new ways to create molecules, ranging from drugs to new catalysts.

The thing that I like most about my thesis is…. 

That I have been able to work on quite different projects from a computational and experimental point of view.

What advice do you have for someone who’s starting their PhD now?

Enjoy the process and try to be organized about everything you do, even if you think you are wasting time at the moment, it will pay off later, you will save that invested time in the future.

What has been your biggest influence/motivation?

My biggest motivation was actually learning the process of being a scientist.

Where are you going next? What will you do there?

My plan is to go back to my hometown, rest for a while and reflect about my future.

What is your favourite molecule? 

I have always found aromatic compounds very interesting, because of their bonding and structure.

If you were a piece of lab equipment, what would you be?

I would be a Schlenk tube because it has allowed me to run very sensitive experiments in which you need to control the oxygen and water concentrations in the solvent that is contained within.

Tell us something about you that people might not know… 

I did athletics for 12 years, some of which training for high-level competitions.