On Friday 28th October, Cayetana Zárate, PhD student in Prof. Ruben Martin’s group, received one of the three Lilly awards 2016 for outstanding doctoral students. The awards ceremony took place at Lilly headquarters in Alcobendas (Madrid), during the “5th Lilly Chemistry Symposium.” Cayetana had the opportunity to present her recent discoveries in the field of catalytic C-O bond-functionalization. She devoted particular attention to Ni-catalyzed borylation and silylation techniques using aryl or benzyl methyl ethers.

Cayetana also received recognition for her work in 2015 when she was awarded the SusChem award Predoc – Mestrelab for the paper “A Mild Ni/Cu-Catalyzed Silylation via C-O Cleavage” published on the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

With these awards, Lilly recognises research excellence and the link between the academic field and the pharmaceutical industry. In previous years, other  ICIQ PhD students were awarded this distinction: Nicolas Marion (Nolan’s group, 2006); Elena Herrero (Echavarren’s group, 2008); Patricia Pérez (Echavarren’s group, 2009); Anna Homs (Echavarren’s group, 2014); Xueqiang Wang (Martin’s group, 2015).