Current group members
Piret Villo, PhD
Piret did her PhD with Dr. Lauri Vares at University of Tartu and with Prof. Peter Somfai at KTH and Lund University. During that time she looked into syntheses of analogues to an acetogenin – a bioactive natural product, as well as asymmetric transfer hydrogenation of α-amido-β-keto esters. After that she spent another year with Dr Vares studying new methodology how to functionalize biomass platform molecules. Her subsequent three-year postdoc work was done with Prof. Berit Olofsson at Stockholm University on hypervalent iodine chemistry making diaryliodonium salts and using them as arylating reagents. She is currently working on methodology development and kinetic studies of electrosynthetic reactions.
Cristiana Margarita, PhD
Cristiana graduated in Organic Chemistry from Sapienza Università di Roma in 2014. Then, she worked on Ir-catalyzed asymmetric hydrogenations under the supervision of Prof. Pher G. Andersson at Stockholm University, where she received her PhD in 2019. She is currently involved in methodology development and kinetic studies of Lewis acid-catalyzed transformations of alcohols.
Pintu Maity, PhD
Pintu obtained his B.Sc. degree from Ramkrishna Mission Residential College, Narendrapur (University of Calcutta) in 2010. Following this, he pursued M.Sc. in Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (India) from 2010–2012. He earned his PhD degree (2012-2017) under the supervision of Prof. Brindaban C. Ranu at the department of Organic Chemistry in Indian Association for the Cultivation of science, Kolkata, India. His Phd research work is based on metal catalyzed and visible light photocatalyzed coupling reactions towards synthesis of useful molecules. Then he joined as a postdoc in Prof. Choong Eui Song´s group at Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea. He continued his postdoctoral research under Prof. Arkadi Vigalok (Tel Aviv University, Israel), Prof. Kyungsoo Oh (Chung Ang University, South Korea). His postdoctoral research mainly focused on asymmetric organocatalysis, NO gas sensing by bis-calixarenes through fluoroscence study. Pintu is currently working on electroreductive methodology development.
Davide Di Francesco, PhD
Davide obtained his degree in Chemistry from the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”. Later, he joined Prof. Joseph Samec’s research group at the Department of Organic Chemistry of Stockholm University as a Ph.D. student where he graduated in 2021 defending his thesis on the catalytic valorization of lignocellulosic biomass. He is now working on water tolerant catalytic systems oriented towards the transformation of bioderived alcohols.
Guillermo Ahumada, PhD
Guillermo received a BSc degree in chemistry (2012) from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaiso (PUCV), Chile, and a Ph.D. degree (2017) in cotutelle between the PUCV (Chile) and the Université de Rennes 1 (France) under the supervision of Prof. Carolina Manzur and Dr. Jean-René Hamon, focusing on the electrosynthesis of metal-containing polymers. After completing his Ph.D. in 2017, he moved to UNIST, South Korea, where he began a postdoctoral position in Prof. Bielawski's laboratories and, later, a senior research position with Prof. Grzybowski (2020). In August 2022, he began performing research on electrosynthesis in the Lundberg lab at KTH.
Julius Kuzmin, PhD student
Julius received his masters’ education in molecular science and engineering from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in 2021, doing his thesis work on application of sulfonimidamides in asymmetric synthesis under the supervision of Associate Professor Peter Dinér . During his masters he did an exchange year at ETH Zürich (Switzerland) and worked for half a year on bicyclic hydroxylamines for faster KAT ligation in the Bode group. He is enrolled as PhD student since December 2021 and is currently working on electrochemical activation of strong polarized sigma bonds bonds.
Malin Lill, PhD student
Malin is enrolled as PhD student since August 2022 after receiving her MSc in Chemical Engineering from KTH Royal Institute of Technology earlier the same year. She is targeting method development for electrosynthetic transformations with a particlar focus on reductive strategies.
Nils Schwarz, BSc
Nils received a BSc degree in chemistry in 2021 from the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität in Mainz, Germany. His thesis under the supervision of Prof. Siegfried Waldvogel was about the cathodic reduction of nitroarenes yielding N-Hydroxyquinolone compounds. During his Erasmus stay in the Lundberg lab, Nils is working with Julius on electrochemical activation of strong polarized sigma bonds bonds.
Victoria Chu, BSc
Victoria carries out a 15 credit project course over two periods in electrosynthesis, supervised by Malin and Piret.