Asymmetric Organic Synthesis with Enzymes

Vicente Gotor assumed his current position as Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Oviedo in 1982. His research fields include the areas of Heterocyclic and Bioorganic Chemistry. Specific areas of his research interest are enzymatic amidation reactions with hydrolases, enzymatic chemoselective transformations on natural products, biotransformations with oxynitrilases and oxidoreductases, and chiral recognition with azamacrocycles. He was Vice-chancellor of Research of Oviedo University for four years until June 2000. At present, he is the leader of Bioorganic group in the Chemistry Faculty of Oviedo University and Head of Department of Organic and Inorganic Chemistry. He has published more of 240 papers, is director of 40 Doctoral Thesis and coauthor of 10 patents.

Ignacio Alfonso completed his PhD in 1999 at the University of Oviedo, obtaining the PhD extraordinary award. During his doctoral studies, he spent a short period of time at the University of Strasbourg working under the supervision of Profs. Bernard Dietrich and Nobel Prize Winner Jean-Marie Lehn. After finishing his PhD, he moved to The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, as a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. M. Reza Ghadiri. Since 2004, he is researcher at the University Jaume I in Castellon, Spain. His research interests are bioorganic and supramolecular chemistry, biosensing, molecular recognition as well as natural and biomimetic catalytic systems.

Eduardo Garcia-Urdiales graduated in Chemistry in 1996 at the University of Oviedo. He joined Prof. Gotor's group where he performed his PhD. After having finished it in 2001, he moved to Solvay Pharmaceuticals GmbH in Hannover (Germany) as a postdoctoral fellow in the Computer Aided Drug Design unit, where he stayed for two years (2001-2003). Then, he moved back to Oviedo and since 2005 he is working at the Russell Group at EMBL Heidelberg (Germany). His research interests are focussed on the study of protein-ligand interactions by means of computational methods.