Abraham Mendoza

Abraham was born and raised in Gijón, a city in the beautiful coast of Asturias (north of Spain). There, he completed his undergraduate studies in Organic and Inorganic Chemistry in the University of Oviedo (2000-2004). Then, Abraham joined the research group of Prof. José Barluenga at the same university, under the co-supervision of Prof. Javier Fañanás and Dr. Felix Rodríguez (2003-2010). Following an early education (MSc) on the organometallic chemistry of metal-carbene complexes, his PhD was earned studying new modes of catalytic activation of alkynes, culminating in the total synthesis of (–)-Berkelic Acid.

After completing his PhD, he was honored to join Prof. Baran’s laboratories at The Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, CA, USA) on a Fulbright Fellowship (2010-2012). Under Phil’s mentorship, he was introduced to the total synthesis of natural products using C-H functionalization logic (taxanes) and the development of methods for that purpose.

Then, he moved back to Europe as a Marie Curie Fellow (2012-2014) at the University of Cambridge, working under the supervision of Prof. Matthew Gaunt on bioorthogonal chemistry and C-H insertion catalysis.

In late 2013, he started his independent career at Stockholm University (Dept. of Organic Chemistry) as a Junior Researcher of the Swedish Research Council and became a member of the Berzelii EXSELENT Center on Porous Materials. In 2017, he was promoted to become a permament member of the faculty with the generous sponsorship of the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. His group is currently pursuing scalable and automatic synthetic methods involving C–H functionalization, oxidative coupling and main-group organometallic photochemistry.