Felicidades Dr. Mora!

Pablo Mora, a PhD student who is under Prof. Antonio M. Echavarren supervision, has successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “Design of Novel Monodentate Ferrocenyl Ligands for Enantioselective Au(I)-catalyzed 1,6-Enyne Cyclizations” publicly on Wednesday,15^th January.

The members of the evaluation committee were Prof. Elena Fernández (URV), Prof. Fabio Juliá (Universidad de Murcia) and Prof. Jan Streuff (Uppsala University, Sweden).

Pablo Mora was born and raised in Yecla, a small city in the north of Murcia. He graduated in Pharmacy from the Universidad de Granada (UGR) and spent a year abroad in Aberdeen, Scotland, as part of the Erasmus program. In his free time, he enjoys outdoor activities like hiking and rock climbing, and he appreciates the excellent locations near Tarragona for these pursuits.

He received a Severo Ochoa Fellowship, which allowed him to undertake a 4-month short stay in the research group of Prof. Paul Chirik at Princeton University (USA), where he worked on cross-coupling reactions.

Why did you become a scientist?

I have always been fascinated by the complexity of the human body and diseases. I became a scientist to understand, enjoy and explore challenges in that area.

What do you want to achieve as a scientist?

I would like to contribute to the development of molecules that can change the world, using the best of my knowledge and dedication.

What is your thesis about?

My thesis is about the design and study of new ligands based on a fascinating molecule called ferrocene. These ligands, in combination with gold, allowed us to perform three different reactions with high levels of enantioselectivity, which is a great advancement in the field.

What triggered your interest for the subject of your thesis?

I stumbled across an old publication that was unrelated to our work and decided to explore it with a different eye.

What applications can your thesis have in the future?

The ligands I designed are fairly easy to prepare and delivered good results so I hope in the future someone can find other applications or get inspired by my work.

From the lessons learnt (or skills developed) at ICIQ, which one do you value the most?

The lesson I valued the most is that you have to believe in yourself, regardless of the success of your experiments or the progress in your thesis.

What ICIQ moment you´ll never forget? 

I will never forget the day I started at ICIQ and got to meet the people (now friends), who would ride alongside me these 4 years and would make this time so joyful and fun. It is hard to pick a single moment having so many memories with them.

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

I found a job at a pharma company in south Germany where I will work as a process chemist.

What is your favorite molecule? 

My favorite molecule is morphine. Known by humanity for more than 2000 years, it still remains the most used analgesic and it is a continuous source of inspiration towards new drugs. It has also avoid unimaginable pain to many people over the years.

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

I would be a Kugelrohr distillation apparatus. It makes distillations incredible easy and it has a funny german old-school name. Not everyone in the chemistry community knows about this useful device!