Invited Speakers
Yves GEERTS
Spin-Induced Absolute Asymmetric Synthesis Biography Yves Geerts studied chemistry at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and did his master thesis under the supervision of Jean-Pierre Sauvage. After a PhD thesis at ULB, he went for a postdoc with Klaus Müllen at the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research and for another one at MIT in the group of Richard Schrock. Since 1999, he is professor of chemistry and the head of the Laboratory of Polymer Chemistry. Soon after, he started to be active at the European level with the coordination of FP5-DISCEL (2001-2004), FP6-NAIMO (2004-2008), FP7-ONE-P project (2009-2011), MSCA UHMob (2019-2023), and MSCA CISSE (2023-2026). His scientific interests include the design, the synthesis and the characterization of novel organic materials to study spin, charge, and heat transport, as well as non-equilibrium phenomena and chiral symmetry breaking. Yves Geerts has recently been appointed Director of the Solvay Institute for Chemistry.
Alexander Kuhn Chiral Electrochemistry: from Molecules to Materials and Back Biography Alexander Kuhn obtained his Master degree in chemistry from the Technical University Munich (1991), and his PhD from the University of Bordeaux (1994). After his post-doc at Caltech (1996), he was appointed in the same year as an Assistant Professor at the University of Bordeaux and then in 2000 as a Full Professor, working at the Institut of Molecular Science (University Bordeaux, CNRS, Bordeaux INP). Since 2015 he is also Adjunct Professor at VISTEC, Thailand, and more recently (2020) Distinguished Professor of the “Outstanding Talent Program” at Henan University, China. He is a senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France, distinguished senior member of the French Chemical Society and Fellow of the International Society of Electrochemistry. He is the recepient of several honors, including a fellowship from the Alexander-von-Humboldt foundation, the Grand Prix Süe of the French Chemical Society and the science medal in silver of CNRS.
Jean-François BRIÈRE
Biography Dr Jean-François Brière completed his PhD with Prof Guy Quéguiner (1998, France - heterocycles synthesis), and was a postdoctoral fellow with Prof Henk Hiemstra (1999-2001, the Netherlands - total synthesis) and Prof Istvan E. Markó (2001-02, Belgium, NHC in metal-catalysis) in collaboration with Rhodia Company. Recruited in 2002 (LCMT, Caen Normandy University, France – Sulfur chemistry). Brière is currently CNRS senior research scientist in the Heterocycles team, e-CatCH group, at CARMeN institute since 2007 (ex-COBRA-LCMT laboratories, Rouen Normandy University, France). His research interests are methodology-driven via (organo)catalytic processes for the construction of bio-relevant chiral heterocycles, electrosynthesis and photoredox approaches (www.lab-cobra.fr/equipes/heterocycles/).
Elizabeth HILLARD
Recent investigations in X-ray natural optical activity Biography Elizabeth Hillard is a CNRS Research Director affiliated with the Switchable Molecules and Materials Group at the Chemistry of Condensed Matter Institute of Bordeaux. Her research investigates chiral paramagnetic coordination complexes, mainly in the solid state, focusing on circular dichroism (CD), magnetochiral dichroism (MChD), and X-ray natural circular dichroism (XNCD). She currently coordinates two ANR collaborative projects: XIMTEX (2022–2026), exploring microscopic theories of XNCD, and MaChiNaCo (2020–2026), on induced MChD in chiral nano-objects. Dr. Hillard earned her PhD at Texas A&M under F. Albert Cotton and completed an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship at Chimie ParisTech. She received her Habilitation from the University of Pierre and Marie Curie in 2010. Through collaborations with the ESRF and SOLEIL synchrotrons, as well as several French labs, her work aims to uncover how electronic and chiral structure shape the intensity of chiro-optical responses across energy ranges from infrared to X-ray.
Laure GUY Harnessing Helicoidal Molecules for Functional Chiral Materials Biography Laure Guy was born in Bordeaux, France and pursued her higher education in Lyon where she obtained her PhD in Organic Chemistry in 1995 from ENS de Lyon under the supervision of Pr. J. Vidal and Pr. A. Collet in the field of chemical biology. She pursued postdoctoral research at the University of Geneva in the group of Pr W. Oppolzer before joining the ENS de Lyon Chemistry Laboratory as a Research Engineer in 2005. Her career has been devoted to exploring the structure–activity relationships of chiral molecules, with a particular focus on applications in optically active materials, as well as an interest in photo-activatable systems for biological applications
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