Yesterday the Italian Chemical Society (SCI) announced that Miquel Costas, full professor at the Institut de Química Computacional i Catàlisi (IQCC) of the UdG, received the Ciamician-González Lectureship 2023 award. This award recognizes his outstanding scientific contributions between Organic Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry and Applied Catalysis. His studies improve the role and the potential of first-row transition metals in the rational design and implementation of sustainable and efficient catalytic processes for the enantioselective functionalization of C-H and C=C bonds.

The Ciamician-González 2023 Chair is awarded within the framework of the Collaboration Agreement between the Royal Spanish Society of Chemistry (RSEQ) and the Italian Chemical Society (SCI). Prof. Miquel Costas will be invited to present his work at three universities/research institutes in Italy during this year.

Trajectory: Miquel Costas pursued PhD studies in the group of Prof. A Llobet in the University of Girona (UdG). Research work during the PhD involved scientific stays at Texas A&M (Prof D. H. R. Barton,1996), and in Basel (Prof. A. Zuberbüehler, 1998). After defending his PhD, he moved to the group of Prof. L. Que, Jr, at the University of Minnesota with a Fellowship of Fundació La Caixa. He returned to UdG in 2002 with a contract from the Ramón y Cajal program and he was appointed Professor Titular in 2003, and full Professor in 2022. In 2006 he initiated his independent career as a group leader in QBIS-CAT. His research interests involve biologically inspired design of inorganic reactivity and catalysis and supramolecular chemistry. Costas has more than two hundred twenty scientific publications, collecting over 15000 citations, and has directed over twenty two PhD thesis. He has been awarded three times the ICREA Academia Award (2018, 2013 and 2008), elected as new Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2020), received the award of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry to excellence in research (2014) and medalla Rafael Uson award GEQO-RSEQ (2023). His research activity has been continuously funded by the ERC (Starting Grant 2009, PoC in 2011 and 2012, and ERC Advanced Grant in 2019) and the Spanish Ministery of Science.

Congratulations Miquel!

Girona, February 9th, 2024
More information: ges.iqcc@udg.edu