Double Award Wins for Dr Sara Bonfante
Sara Bonfante has achieved a remarkable feat, winning two prestigious prizes in the same week for her outstanding PhD work. She has been awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry Main Group PhD Lectureship Prize and the Division de Chimie de Coordination Thesis Prize.
Sara is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the University of York under the supervision of Professor Jason Lynam and Dr John Slattery funded by the Leverhulme Trust. She completed her PhD as part of the Coordination Chemistry Inspires Molecular Catalysis (CCIMC) Marie Skłodowska-Curie European Joint Doctorate Network. Her thesis, titled “Zirconium- and Phosphine-Assisted C–F Bond Activation and Functionalisation,” was conducted at the Laboratory of Coordination Chemistry, University of Toulouse (supervised by Antoine Simonneau and Christian Lorber) and the Department of Chemistry at the University of York (supervised by Jason Lynam and John Slattery). She also completed a secondment with Italmatch Chemicals during her doctoral studies.
Dr Bonfante's research initially focused on C-F activation using reactive zirconium complexes, as detailed in a recent publication (Bonfante et al., Chem. Sci., 2025, 16, 3552). During this work she discovered unexpected reactivity involving the phosphine ligand, leading to a new research direction exploring this main group element reactivity. This resulted in the groundbreaking discovery that catalytic C-F bond functionalisation is possible using simple phosphines (Bonfante et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2024, 146, 2005). This finding contradicted previous assumptions that such reactions required phosphorus compounds in unusual, constrained geometries. She will give an invited lecture on this topic at the Royal Society of Chemistry Dalton 2025 conference as part of her prize.
This double prize win represents a well-deserved recognition of Dr Bonfante's exceptional research and contributions to the field of coordination and main group chemistry.
Congratulations to Dr Bonfante!