Biography

Véronique Gouverneur received her undergraduate degree in chemistry at the Universite Catholique de Louvain (LLN, Belgium), where she worked with Professor Leon Ghosez . She stayed in the group of Professor L. Ghosez for her doctoral studies that she completed end of 1991. During this time she focused on the development of new reaction methodology directed towards the stereocontrolled formation of hetero Diels-Alder adducts derived from activated 2-azadienes combined with nitroso heterodienophiles. In 1992, Veronique Gouverneur left Belgium and moved to a postdoctoral position with Professor Richard Lerner at the Scripps Research Institute (California, USA) where her studies culminated with the generation of the first exo and endo Diels-Alderase antibodies. Veronique Gouverneur returned to Europe in 1994 where she accepted a position of Maitre de Conference at the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg (France). She worked with Dr Charles Mioskowski during this period and was Associate Member of the ISIS Institute directed by Professor Jean-Marie Lehn. She started her independent research career as a member of the chemistry faculty at the University of Oxford in September of 1998, where her group's research interests are centred around new approaches to organic synthesis with specific interests in new reaction design, enantioselective catalysis and the synthesis of bio-relevant targets. More particularly, she has initiated a research program aimed at developing new tactical approaches towards fluorinated molecules to address long-standing problems in the synthesis of fluorinated analogues of natural products, pharmaceutical drugs and molecular probes for PET imaging. Since her appointment in Oxford, she also holds a tutorial fellowship at Merton College Oxford where she teaches organic and biological chemistry. Véronique Gouverneur's research was recently recognized by the AstraZeneca award for organic chemistry 2005. In 2006, Véronique Gouverneur has been conferred the title of Reader in Chemistry by the University of Oxford as a recognition of distinction. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the RSC journal Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry. She is also the UK representative of EUCHEM's organic chemistry division. In 2008, she became Professor in Chemistry, and her work was recognized with the RSC Bader Award.