17/07/2018

Jordi Mestres elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry

Congratulations to Jordi Mestres, head of the Systems Pharmacology group of GRIB (IMIM-UPF), elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry of the United Kingdom. Achieving this status is an important milestone in a researcher's career as it indicates scientific quality and is one of the most important recognitions a chemist can receive.

The Royal Society of Chemistry is a non-profit organisation that is more than 175 years old and has more than 54,000 members across the world. Its aim is to advance excellence in the chemical sciences, investing in the education of future generations, creating and maintaining standards, encouraging innovation, and advising governments.

To become a member, you must have at least 5 years professional experience and your work must have made a significant impact in the field of chemistry, contributing notably to the advancement of the chemical sciences. "I am absolutely delighted and honoured to be elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and become part of the select group of scientists who have made important contributions in the field of chemistry", said Mestres. "I am deeply grateful to the Royal Society of Chemistry for this recognition. It is immensely satisfying and encourages me to push towards more ambitious goals and reach new heights", the researcher added.

Jordi Mestres received a degree in chemistry from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (1990) and a doctorate in chemistry from the Institute of Computational Chemistry at Girona University (1996). Although he began his research career in the field of quantum chemistry, his time in pharmaceutical companies (firstly as a postdoc researcher at Pharmacia & Upjohn, in the US, and later as head of the medical computational chemistry group at Organon, Scotland) led him towards computational drug design. In 2003, he returned to Barcelona, where he set up the Chemogenomics group as part of Biomedical Informatics (GRIB) research programme at the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM). The excellence of his research was recognised in 2006 with the international Corwin Hansch award presented by the QSAR & Modelling Society, and again in 2007 with the first Transfer of Knowledge Prizes given by the UPF Social Council. Over the past 20 years, Jordi Mestres has been a guest speaker at the most prestigious conferences in the field of drug design. He is the author of more than 150 publications, including 9 patents. He is currently a Senior Researcher at the IMIM, Associate Professor at the UPF, and Founder and President of the company Chemotargets SL.