Tomislav Rovis

Columbia University

Tomislav Rovis was born in Zagreb, Croatia, but was largely raised in Southern Ontario, Canada.  Following his undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto, he earned his Ph.D. degree at the same institution in 1998 under the direction of Professor Mark Lautens.  From 1998-2000, he was an NSERC postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University with Professor David A. Evans.  In 2000, he began his independent career at Colorado State University and was promoted in 2005 to Associate Professor and in 2008 to Professor and John K. Stille Chair in Chemistry.  His group’s accomplishments have been recognized by a number of awards including an NSF CAREER and a Roche Excellence in Chemistry award.  He has been named a GlaxoSmithKline Scholar, Amgen Young Investigator, Eli Lilly Grantee, Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, Monfort Professor at Colorado State University, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Katritzky Young Investigator in Heterocyclic Chemistry, and an Arthur C. Cope Scholar.  In 2016, he moved to Columbia University where he is currently Samuel Latham Mitchill Professor of Chemistry.

Donna Blackmond

Scripps Research

Donna G Blackmond received a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. She has held professorships in chemistry and in chemical engineering in the US (University of Pittsburgh), Germany (Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung), and the UK (University of Hull; Imperial College London), and she has worked in the pharmaceutical industry (Merck). She is Professor of Chemistry, Department Chair, and the John C. Martin Endowed Chair in Chemistry at Scripps Research, La Jolla, California. She holds joint US/UK citizenship.

Prof. Blackmond is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the US National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. She has been recognized internationally for her research including the Wolfson Research Merit Award from the Royal Society, the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft Award for Outstanding Women Scientists, the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society, and the IUPAC Award for Distinguished Women in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering. She has been a Woodward Visiting Scholar at Harvard, a Miller Institute Research Fellow at Berkeley, and an NSF Visiting Professor at Princeton. Among other named lectureships, she has been the Merck Distinguished Lecturer at MIT, the Paul Gassmann Lecturer at the University of Minnesota, the Givaudan-Karrer Lecturer at University of Zürich, the 8^th Anton Vilsmeier Lecturer at the Universität Regensburg, the Lemieux Lecturer at University of Ottawa, the Laird Lecturer at the University of British Columbia, and the Gordon Lecturer at the University of Toronto. In 2021 she received a Humboldt-Forschungspreis from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Prof. Blackmond’s research focuses on mechanistic studies of organic reactions, including asymmetric catalysis. She pioneered the methodology of “Reaction Progress Kinetic Analysis (RPKA)” for fundamental mechanistic studies of complex organic reactions as well as for streamlining pharmaceutical process research. Prof. Blackmond is a Simons Investigator in the Simons Foundation Collaboration on the Origins of Life where she studies prebiotic chemistry and the origin of biological homochirality. She has been invited by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to speak at two Nobel Workshops, “On the Origin of Life” (2006) and “Chiral Matter” (2021).

Matthew Sigman

University of Utah

Matt Sigman was born in Los Angeles, California in 1970.  He received a B.S. in chemistry from Sonoma State University in 1992 before obtaining his Ph.D. at Washington State University with Professor Bruce Eaton in 1996 in organometallic chemistry. He then moved to Harvard University to complete an NIH funded postdoctoral stint with Professor Eric Jacobsen. In 1999, he joined the faculty of the University of Utah where his research group has focused on the development of new synthetic methodology with an underlying interest in reaction mechanism. His research integrates the study/development of new chemical reactions with the invention of new data science approaches to reaction interrogation. He currently is the Peter J. Christine S. Stang Presidential Endowed Chair of Chemistry at the rank of Distinguished Professor and is the department chair.

Sigman’s research efforts have been recognized by several awards including the Pfizer Award for Creativity in Organic Chemistry (2004), the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award (2004), the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (2010), the University of Utah Distinguished Research Award (2011) and ACS Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry (2017). Additionally, he has been recognized for outstanding teaching at the University of Utah as highlighted by being named the University of Utah Distinguished Honors Professor (2008), the Robert W. Parry Award (2009) and Distinguished Teaching Award (2022).

Geoffrey W. Coates

Cornell University

Geoffrey W. Coates received a B.A. degree in Chemistry from Wabash College in 1989, a Ph.D. in organic chemistry with Robert Waymouth at Stanford University in 1994, and was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow with Robert Grubbs at the California Institute of Technology. He joined the Cornell University faculty in 1997, where he is now the Tisch University Professor.

The research focus of the Coates Group is the development of new catalysts for the synthesis of macromolecules and small molecules. Professor Coates’ research concentrates on developing new methods for reacting commodity feedstocks in unprecedented ways. His current research centers on the development of homogeneous catalysts for olefin polymerization, heterocycle carbonylation, epoxide homo- and copolymerization, the utilization of carbon dioxide in polymer synthesis, and new polymers for energy conversion and storage.

Professor Coates has been awarded the A. C. Cope Scholar Award, the ACS Award in Affordable Green Chemistry, the Hach Award for Entrepreneurial Success, the Applied Polymer Science Award, and the Carl S. Marvel Creative Polymer Chemistry Award. In 2011 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Prof. Coates was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors in 2017. He was awarded the Eni Award in 2022. He is the scientific cofounder of Novomer, Ecolectro, and Intermix Performance Materials, and is an Associate Editor of JACS.