Leonardo Silva Santos

Dr. Leonardo S. Santos was born and grew up in Santos (Sao Paulo state, Brazil). In 1993, he went to Brasilia where he studied chemistry at the University of Brasilia. In 1997, he moved to Campinas (Brazil) for his master degree (1999) and PhD appointments at Unicamp University (2003) under the direction of Dr. R. A. Pilli. During his PhD, he went to Chicago, USA, for a PhD sandwich program at the University of Chicago with Dr. Viresh H. Rawal (2001?2002). He then took up a postdoctoral position at the Thomson Mass Spectrometry Laboratory at the University of Campinas, where along with Dr. M. N. Eberlin he introduced ESI-MS-based mechanistic studies to Brazil. In 2005 he moved to Germany, joining the group of Dr. Jürgen O. Metzger at Carl von Ossietzky Universität for a postdoctoral appointment. In Germany, he continued to study organic reaction mechanisms of organocatalyzed polymerization through new methodologies using mass spectrometry (ESI-MS). He is currently associate professor at the Chemistry Institute of Natural Resources at Talca University (Chile), and established the Laboratory of Asymmetric Synthesis (LAS) in 2006 as well as the Center for Nanoscience (CeNS) in 2010 to develop a 10-years collaborative project with Fraunhofer Institute (Germany) in Chile. His research targets are selected on the basis of novel molecular architecture, important biological activity and interesting mechanism of action. Merging natural products chemistry, chemical synthesis and mechanisms using ESI-MS, these principles form the foundation for Dr. Santos? research and educational programs. Furthermore, he continues to develop new methodologies based on new catalysts and the study of mechanistic pathways involving organometallic compounds through API-MS experiments.