Electrosynthesis Faraday Discussion

Toshio Fuchigami is a Professor Emeritus of Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) and a Director of Sagami Chemical Research Center. He received his Ph.D. from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1974. He became an assistant professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1974 and he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Houston with Prof. R. P. Thummel for one year (1980-1981). He was promoted to associate professor of Tokyo Tech in 1986, then to full professor in 1998, where he served as a senator (2008-2010) and as an institute professor (2012-2015).
He received the Excellent Papers Awards of The Electrochemical Society of Japan in 2007 & 2014, The Electrochemical Society of Japan Award in 2008, and The Electrochemical Society Manuel M. Baizer Award in 2010. He became an ECS fellow in 2010. He also received Kato Memorial Award in 2011, Executive Contribution Award of The Electrochemical Society of Japan in 2013, and Seiichi Tejima Reseach Award in 2020. He published over 330 research papers, 65 review articles, and 70 book chapters.
He served as an Editor-in-Chief of Electrochemistry (formerly, The Journal of Electrochemical Society of Japan) in 2006-2009, Japan Section Chair of The Electrochemical Society in 2009-2011, and President of The Society of Fluorine Chemistry, Japan in 2011-2013.
His current research interests are centered on the new hybrid fields of “Organofluorine Electrochemistry” and ‘‘New Electrolytic Systems for Green Sustainable Chemistry.”

KEVIN D. MOELLER joined the chemistry faculty at Washington University in St. Louis in 1987 where he is now Professor of Chemistry. He was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania on November 25, 1958, earned a BA degree in Chemistry from the University of California – Santa Barbara in 1980, and then his Ph.D. degree in Organic Chemistry (Professor R. Daniel Little) from the same institution in 1985. He was a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Wisconsin – Madison (Professor Barry M. Trost) from 1985 to 1987. Professor Moeller’s independent research primarily focuses on how the interplay between electrochemistry, physical organic chemistry, and synthesis can be used to address a variety of topics. His group has explored the chemistry of highly reactive radical cation intermediates in the context of exploiting electrochemistry as a method for triggering unique synthetic transformations, they have examined the use of modern synthetic chemistry as a method for building complex molecular surfaces on microelectrode arrays, and they have engaged in the design and synthesis of chemical probes for examining and mitigating the reactivity of G-protein signaling pathways. His work continues to play a significant role in defining for the synthetic chemistry community how they can think about and take full advantage of electrochemical methods. The Moeller group’s research is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health and has led to the publication of over 160 papers and the presentation of over 300 talks and invited lectures. Professor Moeller has guided 46 students to their Ph.D. degrees and taught over 6,300 students in his courses. He has received Washington University’s Student Union Professor of the Year Award, the Washington University Arts and Sciences Excellence in Research Award, Washington University’s “Unsung Hero” award for his contributions to undergraduate education, the American Chemical Society’s St. Louis Award, the Manuel M. Baizer Award for Organic and Biological Electrochemistry from the Electrochemical Society, the ACS Midwest Award, the ACS Arthur C. Cope Scholar – Late Stage Career Award, and the Jaroslav Heyrovsky Prize for Molecular Electrochemistry from the International Society for Electrochemistry. Professor Moeller served at the National Science Foundation as a Program Director for the Chemical Synthesis and Chemical Structure, Dynamics, and Mechanism B Programs from 2016-2017 and as the Program Lead for the Chemical Synthesis Program from 2017-2018.

Victoria Flexer is a permanent research fellow from CONICET, the National Scientific and Technical Council and a Professor at the National University of Jujuy, Argentina. Victoria holds a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She conducted post-doctoral work in CNRS (Bordeaux, France) and the University of Queensland (Australia). After holding a Marie Curie Fellowship at Ghent University (Belgium), she established her own research group in Jujuy, Argentina, where she has helped create a new research centre right next to the Lithium Triangle, where the largest lithium deposits in brines are found. Currently, her research focuses on two topics. Firstly, she works in the development of new brine processing technologies for the sustainable recovery of lithium salts and other pure products from these brines. Her group also works on the study of electrochemical processes on lithium batteries.

Thomas Wirth is professor of organic chemistry at Cardiff University. After obtaining his PhD at the Technical University of Berlin and a postdoctoral stay at Kyoto University, he started his independent research at the University of Basel, before taking up his current position at Cardiff University in 2000. He was invited as a visiting professor to several places. Thomas Wirth was awarded the Werner-Prize from the New Swiss Chemical Society (2000), the Furusato award from JSPS London (2013) and the Wolfson Research Merit Award from the Royal Society and the Bader Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry (2016). In 2016 he was elected as a fellow of The Learned Society of Wales. His main interests of research concern stereoselective electrophilic reactions, oxidative transformations with hypervalent iodine reagents including mechanistic investigations and electrochemical reactions performed in flow reactors.