Professor Pat Guiry of UCD
Professor Pat Guiry has become the first Irish academic to be elected President of the International Scientific Committee of the European Symposium of Organic Chemistry (ESOC).
The pan-European committee is responsible for the biannual event that brings together hundreds of experts from academia and industry, and students whose research covers organic chemistry and related areas. ESOC also offers plenary and invited lectures, oral presentations and poster sessions.
The 20th ESOC, with an expected attendance of 1,000, will be held in Cologne (Germany) July 2-6, 2017, under the Chairmanship of Professor Hagga Schmalz from the University of Cologne. The first ESOC was held in Cologne in 1979.
Professor Guiry said: “It is a great honour to be elected to this position and to play a leading role in organic chemistry in Europe representing UCD and Ireland. I look forward to working with my colleagues on the International Committee and the local organisers in Cologne for the 20th ESOC in 2017.”
The conference aims at stimulating new emerging areas in organic chemistry, namely those related to organic electronics for chemical sensing, photo-pharmacology, vaccines, organic synthesis and catalysis.
Contributions to the areas of carbohydrates and proteins, natural product organic chemistry and materials, in particular those relevant to industry, e.g. to food and pharmaceutical industries are very welcome to the symposium, based on their usefulness for a healthy life and better ageing.
Professor Guiry, Professor of Synthetic Organic Chemistry at the School of Chemistry, University College Dublin, is Director of the Centre for Synthesis and Chemical Biology, a collaboration between University College Dublin (UCD), Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI).
He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and is the Vice-Chair of its Physical, Chemical and Mathematical Sciences Committee.
He was the Chairman of ESOC-15, which was held in UCD in July 2007 with 700 participants. He was elected as the Ireland-United Kingdom representative on the committee in 2013 and was Vice-President from 2013-15.
The International Scientific Committee includes:
- President: Prof. Pat Guiry (University College Dublin, Ireland)
- Vice-President: Prof. Adriaan Minnaard (University of Groningen, The Netherlands)
- Prof. Dr Helma Wennemers (ETH, Zurich, Switzerland)
- Prof. Lise-Lotte Gundersen (University of Oslo, Norway)
- Prof. Doron Shabat (Tel Aviv University, Israel)
- Prof. Marek Chmielewski (Poland)
- Prof. Dr Thorsten Bach (Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany)
- Prof. Valentin Ananikov (Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia)
- Prof. Jean Rodriguez (University of Aix-Marseille, France)
- Prof. Manolis Stratakis (University of Crete, Greece)
- Prof. Ivo Stary (Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry ASCR, Czech Republic)
- Prof. Jesús Jiminez-Barbero (University of Bilbao, Spain/Portugal)
- Prof. Cinzia Chiappe (University of Pisa, Italy)
