Dr Julien Vantourout

About Julien

Julien was born and raised in Armentières, France. For his Bachelor and Master studies, he attended CPE Lyon and the University of Lyon 1, where he worked in the laboratory of Prof. Olivier Baudoin, and graduated in 2014. In the fall of that year, he enrolled the collaborative PhD program between GlaxoSmithKline and the University of Strathclyde working in the area of copper-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions under the supervision of Prof. Allan J. B. Watson and Dr. Albert Isidro-Llobet. He earned his PhD in Chemistry in March 2018. Afterward, he undertook a postdoctoral appointment at Scripps Research Institute (CA, USA) with Prof. Phil Baran, working on the design of a suite of new P(V)-based reagents and the development of electrochemically driven metal-catalyzed reactions. Julien was then promoted to the role of Staff Scientist of the Baran lab, overseeing several industrial collaborative projects. In December 2020, he started his independent career as a CNRS researcher in the SCORE lab at the ICBMS of Lyon focusing on the development of transition metal-catalyzed electrochemical transformations. Since 2023, he is in on detachment at Syngenta (Basel, Switzerland). Julien has co-authored multiple peer reviewed publications (>40) and is a co-inventor on two patent applications. He has been the recipient of several awards including the Young Chemist of Industry prize from the SCI and the Marc Julia prize from the DCO.

Research Interests

Building molecular complexity from feedstock chemicals is an incessant and exciting challenge faced by pharmaceutical, agrochemical and material industries. Toward this goal, transition metal catalysis has appeared as an indispensable tool in the activation and transformation of these simple molecules. However, most of the current transition metal-catalyzed processes require the use of non-abundant, expensive and toxic metals. Therefore, activating simple starting material in a true sustainable way remains a gigantic challenge.

To this end, the lab aspire to develop cross-coupling reactions that are solely (electro)catalyzed by Mn(II) complexes. In addition, access highly reactive intermediates from simple starting materials such as ketones, alkenes, esters or alcohol using earth-abundant transition metal catalysis) and/or electrochemistry will also be investigated. Being able to carefully control these reactive species would allow the development of useful methodologies and open new ways of disconnecting molecules in a sustainable and environmentally friendly manner. We will also use the power and precision of spectroscopic and mechanistic techniques such as NMR, IR, UV, Mass, EPR, X-ray and kinetics studies to understand mechanistic pathways taking place during the reactions.

We will tackle these challenges with ambition, enthusiasm and dedication and will explore the unknown exciting territories of chemistry with the next generation of scientists.

Selected publicqtions