Stefan Matile
CV
Stefan Matile is a Full Professor in the Department of Organic Chemistry at the University of Geneva, a founding member of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Chemical Biology and a founding member of the NCCR Molecular Systems Engineering. He currently holds a CH-ERC Advanced Grant (2022) and an SNSF Excellence Grant (2021, by invitation). In 2010, he became an ERC Advanced Investigator, in 2017 an SNSF Level-1 Investigator. He is the co-author of more than 380 publications, many in top society-based journals (69 JACS/Au, etc), and has delivered over 320 lectures all over the world. About half of the more than 120 junior researchers he has trained so far (PhD, postdoc) are now active in academia (China, England, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Spain, South Korea, USA, etc); others preferred a career in industry (Roche, Novartis, Sandoz, Syngenta, Nestlé, Firmenich, Givaudon, Siegfried, Lonza, ChemSpeed, Dottikon, DuPont Geneva, BASF, JTI, etc), or elsewhere. Educated at the University of Zurich (PhD, with Wolf Woggon) and Columbia University in New York (postdoc, with Koji Nakanishi), he started his independent academic career as an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University, Washington DC, before moving to Geneva.
Web of Science ResearcherID AFL-7826-2022
Video Portrait (UGe, on the occasion of SNSF-ERC Advanced Grant, 2022)
Research Interests
Translational supramolecular chemistry, at the interface of synthetic organic chemistry, chemical biology and materials chemistry. Recent highlights are catalysis with electric fields (electromicrofluidics), anion-π interactions, chalcogen and pnictogen bonds, dynamic covalent exchange cascades to enable and inhibit entry into cells (thiol-mediated uptake), and mechanosensitive probes to visualize physical forces in living systems (fluorescent flippers).
Recent Key Publications
Gutiérrez López, M. Á.; Ali, R.; Tan, M.-L.; Sakai, N.; Wirth, T.; Matile, S. “Electric Field-Assisted Anion-π Catalysis on Carbon Nanotubes in Electrochemical Microfluidic Devices,” Sci. Adv. 2023, 9, eadj5502.
Saidjalolov, S.; Coelho, F.; Mercier, V.; Moreau, D.; Matile, S. “Inclusive Pattern Generation Protocols to Decode Thiol-Mediated Uptake,” ACS Cent. Sci. 2024, 10, 1033–1043.
Renno, G.; Chen, D.; Zhang, Q.-X.; Gomila, R. M.; Frontera, A.; Sakai, N.; Ward, T. R.; Matile, S. “Pnictogen-Bonding Enzymes,” Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2024, 63, e202411347.
Saidjalolov, S.; Chen, X.-X.; Moreno, J.; Cognet, M.; Wong-Dilworth, L.; Bottanelli, F.; Sakai, N.; Matile, S. “Asparagusic Golgi Trackers,” JACS Au, in press.
Laurent, Q.; Martinent, R.; Lim, B.; Pham, A.-T.; Kato, T.; López-Andarias, J.; Sakai, N.; Matile, S. “Thiol-Mediated Uptake,” JACS Au 2021, 1, 710–728 (account introducing this topic).
Chen, X.-X.; Bayard, F.; Gonzalez-Sanchis, N.; Pamungkas, K. K. P.; Sakai, N.; Matile, S. “Fluorescent Flippers: Small-Molecule Probes to Image Membrane Tension in Living Systems,” Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2023, 62, e202217868 (account introducing this topic).
Zhao, Y.; Cotelle, Y.; Liu, L.; López-Andarias, J.; Bornhof, A.-B.; Akamatsu, M.; Sakai, N.; Matile, S. “The Emergence of Anion-π Catalysis,” Acc. Chem. Res. 2018, 51, 2255–2263 (account introducing this topic).