Guest speakers

Sophie Rousseaux is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Toronto, where she also serves on the Scientific Leadership Team of the Acceleration Consortium. Dr. Rousseaux obtained her PhD from the University of Ottawa in 2012, working with the late Prof. Keith Fagnou on Pd-catalyzed aliphatic C–H bond functionalization reactions. In 2010, she moved to MIT to complete her graduate research with Prof. Stephen L. Buchwald. From 2012–2015, she worked with Prof. Harry L. Anderson, University of Oxford, on the self-assembly of porphyrin nanorings as an NSERC postdoctoral fellow and Glasstone Research Fellow, before starting her independent career at the University of Toronto. Her group’s research interests include organic synthesis, catalysis, and organometallic chemistry, with a particular focus on the synthesis of small rings and nitrile-containing molecules. Selected recent awards include the ACS Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (2026), CSC Keith Fagnou Award (2023), the McLean Award (2022), the University of Toronto School of Graduate Studies Early Career Supervision Award (2022), the Organic Letters Outstanding Publication of the Year Lectureship (2022), a Sloan Research Fellowship (2021), the Dorothy Shoichet Women Faculty Science Award of Excellence (2020), and a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Organic Chemistry (2016–2026).

Originally from Italy, Daniela completed her undergraduate studies in Chemistry at the University of Florence. She then moved to Ireland to complete her Master in Chemistry of Biological Molecules at University College Dublin. Thanks to a prestigious fellowship she could continue her doctoral studies in biocatalysis at the same university under the supervision of Prof. Paradisi. Daniela then moved to the UK, where she worked both in industry (at Synthace in London) and in academia in Prof. Turner's laboratory in the domain of biocatalysis and enzyme engineering. She finally moved to Canada for her second postdoc in Joelle Pelletier's laboratory at UdeM. After a brief period at Carleton University, she is now an Assistant Professor at UQAM. Daniela also holds a Master's in Business Administration from Concordia University, and she is very active in Science Communication.