Dr. David Rombach

David Rombach was born in 1986 in Karlsruhe (Germany) and studied chemistry at LMU Munich and KIT Karlsruhe. During two early scientific adventures as an undergraduate researcher, he was first exposed to fluorine chemistry (Tobias Ritter, Harvard University) and medicinal chemistry (Lennart Bunch, University of Copenhagen). During the latter, he was concerned with in the synthesis of ligands for ionotropic glutamate receptors. After his return, he worked on the synthesis of photoswitches and their incorporation into DNA during his diploma research. Intrigued by photochemistry, he focused on photoredox catalytic activation of SF₆ for pentafluorosulfanyl chemistry with Hans-Achim Wagenknecht during his PhD. In 2019, he moved to Zurich as a postdoctoral fellow to work with Antonio Togni (ETH Zurich), targeting the reactivity of hypervalent sulfur and iodine compounds and trifluoroacetylation chemistry. In 2020, he started his independent research (SNSF Spark) in Erick M. Carreira's group (ETH Zurich) to study novel SF₅-containing motifs. In July 2023, David started as a group leader at the University of Zurich (SNSF Ambizione).