Affiliation: Institut de Química Computacional i Catàlisi, ES

Keywords: Computational enzyme design, Molecular Dynamics, Enzyme catalysis, Fullerene chemistry, DFT

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ID_symbol_B-W_128x1280000-0003-3657-6469

Full profile:

Sílvia Osuna received her PhD in 2010 from the University of Girona (UdG) at the Institut de Química Computacional (IQC) under the supervision of Prof. Miquel Solà and Prof. Marcel Swart. She worked in the computational study of the chemical reactivity of carbon-based compounds, such as (metallo)fullerenes and carbon nanotubes. In October 2010 she moved to the group of Prof. Houk at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) thanks to the IOF Marie Curie fellowship (2010-2012 UCLA, 2012-2013 UdG). Since then, Dr. Osuna has worked in computational design of enzymes of medical and pharmaceutical interest. In December 2013, she rejoined the Institute of Computational Chemistry and Catalysis (IQCC) at the University of Girona with a postdoctoral Juan de la Cierva grant. Since January 2016, she is a Ramon y Cajal researcher at the same institution, and has started the CompBioLab group (https://silviaosuna.wordpress.com) thanks to her European projects: Career Integration Grant (DIREVENZYME, 2013-CIG-630978), as well as a European Research Council project – Starting Grant (ERC-2015-STG-679001, NetMoDEzyme). Sílvia has a total of 56 research publications, and 2 book chapters. Her publications accumulate more than 1160 citations (ISI, July 2017), providing an H index of 22. She has been recently awarded the Young Researcher award by the Royal Spanish Society of Chemistry (RSEQ 20116), and the Research award by the Fundación Princesa de Girona (FPdGi 2016- Science category).

Research interests:

Her research is focused on the study of biochemical processes related to enzyme catalysis, and the development of a computational protocol for the design of new enzymes of pharmaceutical interest. In addition to that, she also explores the chemical reactivity and properties of fullerenes, and carbon-related materials from a computational perspective.