Mattia Silvi

Visible light driven organic synthesis.

During the last few decades, scientists have developed a remarkable ability to construct useful organic molecules. However, there are open challenges that still need to be addressed. We still rely heavily on the use of unabundant precious metal catalysts and chemical processes that create wastes and long-term sustainability issues. Is Nature better than us in doing chemistry? Think about photosynthesis…a striking biochemical process that allows plants to build up molecules from CO2 using light! Inspired by this ideal process, our long-term aim is to create a general chemical framework to allow scientists to construct organic molecules using the energy of light. 

I have a fantastic research group of highly motivated early career researchers (PhDs and post-docs). They are currently working on developing chemical strategies for the generation of new analogues of complex molecules (including drug candidates and natural products). Their enthusiasm and motivation are truly inspiring, and I love supporting them by day-to-day lab discussions and, when time allows, join them in hands-on lab activities. I am often involved in international dissemination activities such as plenary talks in international conferences and invited talks, and discussing science and getting inspired by other scientists is one of my favourite activities. I believe that this is what boosts innovation in research!

I enjoy seeing my students grow, come out with new ideas and develop a critical approach to research. They develop quickly and, at some point, they will knock on your door and share a brilliant idea that will unlock a difficult project that was stalling. This is very rewarding for a supervisor because supervising is not only about transferring scientific notions, but also about inspiring younger scientists with values such as passion for the subject, dedication and resilience.

The most difficult challenge I faced so far was keeping up the laboratory morale during the pandemic. Again, thanks to the resilience and the enthusiasm of my students we have transformed a difficult moment into an opportunity, with daily scientific discussions about scientific proposals, journal clubs, etc. Upon restart of the activities, it felt like we have never stopped working.

We have recently developed new strategies to modify organic molecules using naturally abundant functional groups as handles. This allowed to us to develop a practical conceptual framework to design new structural analogues of drugs and natural products. Using C-H bonds as handles would tremendously extend the generality of our chemistry. But how can we selectively target one specific C-H bond, when a typical relevant molecule has dozens of dozens of them? This is only one of the questions that we aim to answer.  

Organic synthesis often represents the bottleneck of the long process that leads to scientific innovation. We aim to define new practical and sustainable pathways towards chemical synthesis, thereby extending the strict boundaries that limits chemists’ imagination for the invention of the pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and materials of tomorrow.

Unfortunately, we can’t assemble molecules like we would do with LEGO building blocks, but there are specific rules that need to be followed. These rules constitute the beautiful subject known as Organic Chemistry. In my teaching sessions we study these rules and how these can be followed to make molecules. In our research, instead, we question whether we could provide new disruptive strategies to challenge these rules, thus providing chemists with new avenues to assemble molecular complexity.

I interacted with great scientists and fantastic supervisors during my early development as a scientist, who inspired and assisted me to identify the right pathway for me. I am very happy in my job and I would do everything I did so far again and again. Perhaps my advice would be: try to take it a little easier and enjoy the journey!