3rd Empowering Women in Organic Chemistry Europe Conference

Elena Braconi was born in Osimo, Italy. She obtained both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Chemistry from the University of Camerino, Italy.

Pursuing her passion for advanced chemical research, in 2017 Elena moved to Switzerland to pursue a Ph.D. in the Laboratory of Asymmetric Catalysis and Synthesis led by Prof. Nicolai Cramer at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Her work focused on developing novel chiral catalysts based on Earth-abundant metals to promote asymmetric cycloaddition reactions.

After completing her Ph.D., in 2021 Elena transitioned into industry, joining Syngenta Crop Protection AG as a Postdoctoral researcher in the Process Chemistry department based in Stein, Switzerland. She dedicated her efforts to developing sustainable processes for the synthesis of valuable scaffolds for crop protection. In this role, she embraced cutting-edge technologies including high-throughput experimentation, automation and machine learning.

In 2023, Elena was promoted to the position of Team Leader in the Process Development department based in Münchwilen, Switzerland, where she leads a team of three laboratory assistants. In this role, Elena is responsible for developing efficient, sustainable, and scalable processes for the synthesis of active ingredients and intermediates. Her team’s primary objective is to ensure these processes are ready for commercial production and market introduction.

Sarah is Chief Scientific Officer and Co-founder of HydRegen, and has a passion for innovation and sustainability. She earned her PhD in chemistry from the University of Vermont (USA), focusing on synthetic organic chemistry in Prof. Matthias Brewer’s group. She did a postdoc in Prof. Kylie Vincent’s group at the University of Oxford, where she brought biocatalytic hydrogenation technologies from the innovation and proof-of-concept phase through to industrial-readiness. Sarah, alongside Dr Holly Reeve and Prof. Vincent, co-founded HydRegen in 2021 in order to commercialise these biocatalyst technologies. Her role as CSO involves managing the chemistry team, setting R&D strategy and priorities, building relationships with customers, and identifying new technologies and opportunities. As a leader, she is inspired by HydRegen’s core values: collaboration, safety, respect, and productivity.

Allegra was trained in asymmetric catalysis, particularly using transition metals and bifunctional ligands, both during her BSc and MSc degrees at the University of Milan (Gennari–Pignataro group), with an Erasmus semester at RWTH Aachen, and her MSCA PhD studies at the University of Oxford under the guidance of Prof. Darren Dixon (2013–2017). After a brief stint in industry, she joined the Echavarren group at ICIQ, Spain, supported by a 3-year MSCA COFUND fellowship, to work on gold and H-bond donor catalysis. She then spent a year in the Morandi lab at ETH Zurich, focussing on skeletal editing of N-heterocycles and iron catalysis for amination reactions.​

Since September 2022, Allegra has been Assistant Professor in Organic Chemistry at Durham University. Her group works on merging transition-metal catalysis, organocatalysis, ligand design and data science for the stereoselective synthesis of added-value compounds. Since joining Durham, she has secured over 1.8m€ in funding as a PI, including a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship.

• Since 2022 acquired coaching qualifications: PCC certified coach, NLP & Hypnosis master
• Current role since 2017: Director of Medicinal Chemistry & Drug Design at Merck Healthcare KGaA in Darmstadt, Germany
• In 2010 joined Merck KGaA in Darmstadt, Germany as laboratory head in Medicinal Chemistry
• Postdoctoral stay with Steven Ley in Cambridge, UK
• PhD in total synthesis of natural products at ETH, Zürich in Prof. Altmann’s group
• Chemistry studies at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
• Vocational training as bench chemist at Hoechst AG, Germany

Rebecca T. Ruck is Associate Vice President, MSD Process Research & Development, where she leads the Enabling Technologies group, an innovation incubator of biologists, chemists, engineers and data scientists. Becky is a leader in women in chemistry efforts externally through the WCC-Merck Research Award and Empowering Women in Organic Chemistry (EWOC) conference and internally through expanded Diversity, Equity & Inclusion accomplishments, such as a series of D&I-themed TED-style talks that have greatly impacted the department’s understanding and appreciation of these important topics. She has been recognized with the 2018 ACS Award for Encouraging Women into Careers in the Chemical Sciences and as a 2020 HBA Rising Star and ACS Fellow. She currently holds positions on the ACS Petroleum Research Fund and the MIT Chemistry Visiting Committee and is an Associate Editor at ACS Catalysis. Becky graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University, obtained her PhD in chemistry from Harvard University in the lab of Prof. Eric Jacobsen and conducted NIH-funded post-doctoral research at the University of California-Berkeley with Prof. Robert Bergman.