Biography

Professor Janine Cossy graduated from the University of Reims working under the supervision of Prof. Jean-Pierre Pète. After a postdoctoral stay with Prof. Barry Trost (1980-1982) at the University of Wisconsin, she returned to Reims where she became Director of Research of the CNRS in 1990. The same year, she moved to Paris to become Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris (ESPCI ParisTech).

She has published over 450 articles and filed more than thirteen patents. Her laboratory focuses on one of the major challenges in synthetic organic chemistry: the design and execution of concise approaches to complex molecules including natural and/or biologically active compounds. In this context, her group has been heavily involved in the development of new entries towards highly substituted heterocycles exploring the construction of their skeletons using organometallic reactions catalyzed by both abundant and noble late transition metals. Diastereoselective cyclizations and cycloadditions as well as enantioselective ring expansions developed within her group have provided access to previously unprecedented chemical blueprints. These novel, highly complex motifs, have found widespread application in the field of medicinal chemistry as they populate previously unexplored areas of chemical space. Janine is Associate Editor at Organic Letters since 2005 and participates in the editorial board of different journals including the New Journal of Chemistry, European Journal of Organic Chemistry and the Journal of Organic Chemistry.

Her contributions to the field of Organic Chemistry have been recognized with numerous awards including the CNRS Bronze Medal (1987), CNRS Silver Medal (1996), the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin International Lectureship (2005), the Le Bel prize of the French Chemical Society (2009). She was also named Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 2013.