Professor Josep Cornella was born in La Bisbal del Penedès, a small town in south Catalunya. He graduated from the University of Barcelona and then carried out MSc studies in the department of chemistry while completing research on allylboron reagents. After completing his masters thesis, he moved to the United Kingdom to pursue doctoral studies in the group of Prof. Igor Larrosa (QMUL). He earned his PhD working on the use of aromatic carboxylic acids as aryl donors in metal-catalyzed decarboxylative reactions. He then moved back to Catalunya, where he joined the group of Prof. Ruben Martin (ICIQ) as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow. There, he developed novel transformations involving Ni-catalyzed C–O bond activation and carbon dioxide insertion into organic molecules. Then, he obtained a Beatriu de Pinós Fellowship to carry out further postdoctoral studies in the group of Prof. Phil S. Baran at The Scripps Research Institute. During this time at Scripps, he worked on the discovery and implementation of new transformations based on the concept of “redox-active esters” as practical and readily available partners for Ni- and Fe-catalyzed C–C bond forming reactions.

In spring 2017, he was appointed as a Max Planck Group Leader in the Department of Organometallic Chemistry at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany and now leads the Sustainable Catalysis Laboratory. His group's research interests include understanding fundamental organmetallic steps of Earth-abundant transition metal and post-transition metal (nickel and bismuth) catalyzed reactions as well as using pyrylium salts for various organic transformations.

For more information about Prof. Cornella and his research group: https://www.cornellab.com/

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