Symmetry Webinar | Chirality in Chemistry

Department of Chemistry, Northeastern University, Boston, USA;George O'Doherty is a Full Professor of Chemistry at Northeastern University, Boston, USA. Born in Kilkenny, Ireland, he received his B.S. in Chemistry from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1987) and his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University (1993) under Professor Leo A. Paquette, followed by postdoctoral research at Stanford University with Professor Barry M. Trost and at Imperial College London with Professor Anthony G. M. Barrett. He began his independent career at University of Minnesota in 1996 and in 2002, he moved to West Virginia University. He moved again in 2010, to Northeastern University where he has risen to the rank of Professor. His laboratory is interested in the use of asymmetric catalysis for the synthesis and medicinal chemistry study of biological important carbohydrate and natural products. These stereodivergent asymmetric syntheses enable novel Stereochemical-Structure Activity Relationship (S-SAR) studies of natural structures that nature in general does not provide. Among his honors are the Horace S. Isbell Award from the ACS Carbohydrate Division (2009), the Beckman Young Investigator Award (1999), and a Visiting Professorship at IIT-Bombay (2015–2019).

Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Tokyo University of Science, Tokyo, Japan;Takashiro Akitsu is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science Division II, at Tokyo University of Science, Japan. He earned his Ph.D. in Science from Osaka University in 2000, following his undergraduate studies in chemistry at the same institution. His research spans inorganic and coordination chemistry, with earlier experience in protein crystallography, organic/inorganic hybrid materials, and bioinorganic chemistry. Prof. Akitsu has held positions at Keio University, Stanford University (as a Visiting Scholar), and has been at Tokyo University of Science since 2008, where he became a Full Professor in 2016. He is an active member of the international research community, serving on the editorial boards of numerous journals and as a co-editor of Acta Cryst E for the International Union of Crystallography. He has also been a guest professor at several universities in India and beyond. His contributions to the field have been recognized with multiple awards, including the Publons Peer Review Award and the "Professor of the Year" honor in Biomedical Sciences and Engineering.