Two OBC board members have been awarded prestigious prize grants.

Professors Dave Leigh and Ben Feringa are among the six organic chemists selected to be awarded an inaugural European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant.

Advanced Grants are the flagship awards of the new European Research Council. In total 105 grants have been awarded across the physical sciences and engineering in this inaugural year.

Professor Dave Leigh is Forbes Chair of Organic Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh. Professor Leigh's research achievements include the development of high yielding hydrogen bonding and metal template strategies to catenanes and rotaxanes which, in recent years, have enabled the synthesis of increasingly sophisticated and functional molecular motors and other nanomachines. Professor Leigh has been an OBC Editorial Board member for nearly two years. 

Professor Ben Ferringa is the Jacobus H van't Hoff Professor of Molecular Sciences at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Former Chair of the OBC Editorial Board, Professor Feringa has now been serving on the OBC Advisory Board for nearly two years. His research focuses on many aspects of stereochemistry from asymmetric synthesis to the control of self assembly, recognition and motion.

 Jessica-Jane Doherty