Prof. Robin Bedford from the University of Bristol, UK and Dr. Igor Larrosa from the University of London, UK, visited Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter (FJIRSM) at the invitation of the State Key Laboratory of Structural Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), on January 20th, 2011. During their stay, Prof. Robin Bedford and Dr. Igor Larrosa delivered two seminar reports entitled “The New Iron Age” and“From C-H to C-C activation: new methodologies for the construction of C-C bonds”, and carried out detailed discussion with the research staff of FJIRSM.
Prof. Robin Bedford got a BSc in biochemistry at the University of Sussex in 1991, and then moved across to organometallic catalysis for a D.Phil. with Penny Chaloner (1991 -1994), also at Sussex. He worked as a postdoctoral research associate with Anthony Hill at Imperial College London (1994 -1996). He was appointed to his first academic position, a fixed term lectureship in inorganic chemistry at Trinity College Dublin, in 1996.In 1998 he moved to a lectureship in inorganic chemistry at the University of Exeter, where he was promoted to a Reader in Catalysis in 2003. Prof. Bedford moved to Bristol in 2005 as a Reader in Catalysis, and was promoted to Professor of Catalysis in 2008. He was awarded an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship (2004 -2009) and in 2006 received the Royal Society of Chemistry's Sir Edward Frankland Fellowship for 2006/7. In 2009 he received the Royal Society of Chemistry's Homogeneous Catalysis Award. He is particularly interested in developing new organic reactions that proceed via catalytic C-H activation and producing new catalysts for challenging coupling reactions. Catalysts produced in his research group range from organometallic complexes with well defined ligand architectures to nanoparticulate metals.
Dr. Igor Larrosawas born in Barcelona, Spain. He received his undergraduate education at the Universitat de Barcelona (1999) where he also underwent M.Sc. and Ph.D. studies with Felix Urpi and Pere Romea. A fellowship from Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia supported three month's research in Professor Erick M. Carreira's laboratories at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. With a second fellowship he started postdoctoral research in Professor Anthony G. M. Barrett's group at Imperial College London, UK, where he was appointed group leader. In September 2007 he started his independent career as a lecturer in synthetic organic chemistry at Queen Mary University of London, where his research focuses on the development of new synthetic methodologies in organic chemistry. His research group is quite interested in the development of novel gold catalyzed transformations with the aim of improving current synthetic techniques. Of particular interest is the application of gold catalysis to the controlled construction of multiple bonds in arrays of cascade reactions and in multi-component reactions, allowing for shorter syntheses of natural products.
