Professor Erick M. Carreira

Professor of Chemistry, ETH-Zürich, Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, Institute of Organic Chemistry, Switzerland.

Prof. Carreira’s research program is well known for its scientific depth and thematic breadth. Over the past three decades Carreira has successfully established himself in various areas, including natural products synthesis, methodology, asymmetric catalysis, medicinal chemistry, and chemical biology. In catalysis Carreira has developed concepts leading to a variety of metal-based catalysts for a wide range of catalytic, enantioselective aldehyde addition reactions, alkyne activation, conjugate addition reactions, cycloadditions, and allylation reactions. Carreira has pioneered the use of chiral olefins as steering ligands for catalytic enantioselective catalysis with Ir- and Rh- complexes. He also developed olefin functionalization reactions with cobalt and manganese catalysts, enabling synthesis of organochlorides, azides, hydrazides, nitriles. The work served to inspire subsequent developments in what is termed as HAT chemistry, widely employed in the service of complex molecule synthesis. A family of Ir[P,olefin] complexes enabled the identification of fully stereodivergent, dual‐catalytic, enantioselective transformations, providing convenient access to the full range of stereochemical diversity of products from the same set of starting materials under identical conditions.

Professor Tsuneo Imamoto

Professor Emeritus, Chiba University & Visiting Professor, Hokkaido University, Japan.

Professor Imamoto is a pioneer in the use of phosphine–boranes for the synthesis of chiral phosphine ligands. He designed and synthesized many new P-chiral phosphine ligands and demonstrated their superior performance in asymmetric catalysis. The air-stable P-chiral phosphine ligand QuinoxP* is widely used in both academia and industry. He also made significant contributions to the mechanistic studies of rhodium-catalyzed asymmetric hydrogenation in collaboration with Professor Ilya D. Gridnev. Another outstanding achievement is the development of cerium(III)-modified organometallic reagents, which have found widespread use in the efficient addition reactions of carbonyl compounds.

Professor Neil K. Garg

Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles, U.S.A.

Contributions: The development of synthetic methodologies using unconventional building blocks and innovation in the synthesis of complex molecules.

Professor Naohiko Yoshikai

Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tohoku University, Japan

Contributions: The development of synthetic methodologies using unconventional building blocks and innovation in the synthesis of complex molecules.

Professor Melanie S. Sanford

Department of Chemistry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, U.S.A.

Contributions: Developing transition metal catalyzed reactions for diverse organic transformations including C-H functionalization, arene fluorination and radiofluorination, and decarbonylative cross-coupling.

Professor Hirohisa Ohmiya

Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kanazawa University, Japan

Contributions: The development of novel reactions through system-oriented molecular catalysis, such as organo/metal hybrid catalysis and radical-mediated organocatalysis.