Matt carried out both his part II and his DPhil at Oxford under the supervision of Prof Gouverneur before heading over to Cambridge to post-doc with Dr Matt Gaunt. Matt then rejoined the Gouverneur group as a post-doc researcher.

Oscar Lozano obtained his degrees in Biology and Pharmacy from the University of Barcelona. After that, he carried out his PhD under the supervision of Professors Bosch, Amat and Escolano at the same University. His Thesis was entitled Stereoselective alkylation of chiral bicyclic lactams: Application to the synthesis of alkaloids. In May 2008, he joined the Gouverneur group with a Marie Curie fellowship (IEF) and worked in the synthesis of enantiopure fluorinated heterocycles. From January 2010 he is working in a project funded by CRUK involving the preparation of new radiotracers for cancer imaging.

Zhanghua Gao (Mark) got his PhD degree in Lanzhou University, working in the synthesis of terpenoids with professor Wei-Dong Li. He then joined professor Kocieński’s group in Leeds University as a postdoc, focusing on the synthesis of Ionomycin, a polyether ionophore. He worked in chemical industry in Sunderland and Southampton before moving to Oxford to join the group.

Erika Luethi was born in Switzerland in 1982 and obtained her M.Sc. at the University of Bern in 2006 working on the synthesis and biological evaluation of glycosylated peptide dendrimers. During her PhD thesis, she synthesized new aspartate, glutamate and peptide analogues as ligands for the glutamate transporter protein and the NMDA receptor under the supervision of Prof. J.-L. Reymond at the same University. She joined the group in April 2011 and is working on new chiral reagents for fluorination. In her spare time, she enjoys exploring the shire by bike.

Begoña Checa obtained her degree in Chemistry from the University of Granada. After that, she moved to the University of Barcelona for her Experimental Masters in Organic Chemistry working with titanium enolates in aldol addition reactions under the supervision of Professors Urpí and Romea. She recieved her PhD working in total synthesis of natural products under the supervision of Professors Bosch, Amat and Llor at the same University. Begoña joined the Gouverneur group as an academic visitor in April 2011 and after that she became a Marie Curie fellow (IEF). She is currently working in the area of PET.

Juliana

Dong Li (Dennis) was born in Hubei, China in 1983. He received his B.S. degree from Wuhan University and M.S. degree from Chengdu Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2005 and 2008, respectively. Then he moved to Hokkaido University in Japan for PhD study with the supervision of Prof. Masaya Sawamura, where he worked on palladium and copper catalyzed allylic substitutions. After completing his PhD in 2011, he joined the Gouverneur group as a postdoctoral assistant. He is funded by the EU 7th Framework Programme and working on development of transition metal catalyzed fluorination reactions.

Enrico Emer received his PhD degree in Chemistry at the University of Bologna in 2009, working on the temperature and water effects on organo- and biocatalysis, under the supervision of Prof. D. Giacomini. In the same year he moved to the National Council of Research (Italy) working on the synthesis and biological evaluation of new SARMs, for the treatment of prostate cancer. From 2010 to 2012 he joined the group of Prof. P. G. Cozzi as a postdoc, focusing on new SN1-type organocatalitic transformations. He is a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellow in the Gouverneur group, and he is currently working on new metal-catalysed fluorinations.