Diego Peña

Diego Peña was born in Santiago de Compostela in 1974. He obtained his PhD degree in 2001 from the University of Santiago de Compostela, under supervision of Dolores Pérez and Enrique Guitián. He was PhD visitor at Harvard University (1999, Eric N. Jacobsen group), LMU Munich (2000, Paul Knochel group) and UAM Madrid (2001, Antonio Echavarren group). During 2002 and 2003 he joined the group of Ben L. Feringa (Nobel Laureate 2016, Groningen University, The Netherlands) as a Marie Curie Post-Doctoral Fellow working on asymmetric catalysis. He was visiting researcher at DSM Research (Geleen, The Netherlands) and CRANN-Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). In 2004 he obtained a Ramón y Cajal research position. In 2008 he got an Associate Professor position and in 2020 Full Professor at the University of Santiago de Compostela. In 2018 he was awarded with the Ignacio Ribas Medal by the Specialized Group on Organic Chemistry of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (RSEQ). In 2020 he was awarded with an ERC Synergy Grant (MolDAM), jointly with Leo Gross (IBM Research Zurich) and Jascha Repp (Universität Regensburg) His main research interests are focused on the development of new synthetic methodologies, the synthesis of large aromatic compounds, nanographenes, and on-surface chemistry.