In the last weeks, two PIs of the Institut de Químicia Computacional i Catàlisi (IQCC) were promoted to part-time Full professor at the University of Girona: Prof. Sílvia Osuna and Prof. Marcel Swart.
Sílvia Osuna
Sílvia Osuna received her PhD in 2010 from the University of Girona (UdG) at the Institut de Química Computacional (IQC). In 2010, she moved to the group of Prof. Houk at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship. She obtained a JdC postdoctoral contract at the UdG, a 5-year RyC contract (RYC-2014-16846), and in 2018 an ICREA Research position.
The group of Dr. Osuna was established thanks to the awarded 2015 European Research Council project – Starting grant project (ERC-2015-StG-679001) and focuses on the development of new computational tools and approaches for computational enzyme design. Her group is currently funded by a European Research Council project – Consolidator Grant, two ERC- Proof of Concept grants, and two I+D Spanish MINECO projects.
She been recently awarded the 2023 Young Spanish National Award in Chemistry (María Teresa Toral), 2021 EuChemS lecture award, the Catalan National Research Award – Young Talent 2019 from Fundació Catalana de Recerca i Innovació (FCRi), the Young Researcher award by the Royal Spanish Society of Chemistry (RSEQ 2016), Research award by the Fundación Princesa de Girona (FPdGi 2016- Science category), among many others.
Marcel Swart
Marcel Swart obtained his PhD degree in Groningen (NL) under the guidance of Profs Berendsen, Canters and Snijders. After postdoctoral stays in Amsterdam (Profs Lammertsma, Bickelhaupt), he was appointed ICREA Junior researcher in 2006 and in 2009 ICREA Professor of Theoretical Chemistry at the IQCC Institute and Dept. Chemistry of Univ. Girona (UdG), only 7 years after his PhD. He was elected Fellow of the Young Academy of Europe in 2014, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2015, and Member of Academia Europaea in 2019. He was Chair of a COST Action (ECOSTBio, 2014-2018), Editor of a Wiley-book on “Spin states in Biochemistry and Inorganic Chemistry” (2015), main organizer for the Girona Seminars 2016/2018, Chair of the Young Academy of Europe (2017-2018), and Director of the IQCC institute (2015-2023).
He is Founding Member (2018) and Vice-President of the QBIC Society (2018-2023) and the computational chemistry division of the Spanish Chemical Society (RSEQ-GEQC; 2018-2025). He is Editor of Inorganica Chimica Acta (2020-now), Member of Editorial College of SciPost Chemistry (2021-now), and Gateway Advisor for Inorganic Chemistry and Collection Advisor Computational Chemistry at Open Research Europe (2022-now). He is member of the Steering Committee of the Barcelona Knowledge Hub of Academia Europaea (2023-now) and member of the SAPEA Working Group on ‘Early and mid-career researchers’ (2023-now).
His research on the development of theoretical chemistry tools was awarded the Young Scientist Excellence Award 2005, the 2012 MGMS Silver Jubilee Prize, and a special award by the Serbian Chemical Society in honour of their 120 anniversary for his continuous support for advancing chemical sciences in Serbia, as first and only foreigner.
Many congratulations Sílvia and Marcel!
Girona, Dec. 18, 2024
For more info: ges.iqcc@udg.edu