Dr. Federica Cester

Postdoctoral Researcher

Federica obtained the bachelor’s degree in chemistry (108/110) in 2016 under the supervision of Prof. Paolo Pelagatti at the University of Parma, working on Pd-catalysed amination and amidation reactions for the preparation of MOFs ligands. In 2018, she obtained the master’s degree in industrial chemistry (110/110 cum laude), carrying out the research project via Overworld Scholarship at University of Michigan under the supervision of Prof. Vincent Pecoraro. Her master thesis deals with the synthesis and characterization of functional Metallacrowns for bioimaging applications. In the same hear, she started a research fellowship supported by Chiesi Farmaceutici S.p.A. in the group of Prof. Arturo Arduini and Prof. Andrea Secchi at the University of Parma with a project entitled “Synthesis of cyclic compounds with potential kinase inhibitor activity”. Since 2019 she carried out her PhD in the same research group under the supervision of Prof. Andrea Secchi and Prof. Gianpiero Cera. Her research focuses on the design, synthesis and structural characterization of new materials based on calix[6]arenes. During the PhD (September 2021 – February 2022), she joined as visiting student the group of Prof. Antonio M. Echavarren at ICIQ, in Tarragona, working on the synthesis of new chiral gold(I) cavitand catalysts for asymmetric transformations of polyunsaturated substrates.