Young chemists in Italy and the UK won gold medals in the high quality competition held during the EuCheMS Congress in Torino.

The Awards were presented by Dave Garner, Chair of the Jury. The medal winners are:

• Gold medal: Fabio Arnesano, University of Bari, Italy, for his work ‘Copper-Triggered Aggregation of Ubiquitin’
• Silver medals: Leonard J. Prins, University of Padova, Italy, for work on ‘Catalyst Discovery using Dynamic Chemistry’, and Ali Tavassoli, University of Southampton, UK, for work on ‘Inhibition of HIV Budding by a Genetically Selected Cyclic Peptide Targeting the TSG101-GAG Interaction’
• Gold medal at PhD level: Guillermo Mínguez Espallargas, University of Sheffield, UK, for work on ‘Porous Material Behaviour in a Non-Porous Material: Gas Uptake of Small Molecules Involving Multiple Structural Changes’
• Silver medals at PhD level: Gustavo Fernández, Universidad Complutense de Madrid,  Spain, for work on ‘Self-Organization of Electroactive Materials: exTTF-Based Linear and Dendritic Supramolecular Architectures’ and Viktoria H. Gessner, Universität Würzburg, Germany, for work on ‘a-Lithiated Methylamines as Powerful Building Blocks: From the Molecular Structure to Asymmetric Synthesis’         

The 15 finalists gave presentations to the European Jury comprising Dave Garner, Royal Society of Chemistry, Angela Agostiano, Societa Chimica Italiana, and Christian Remenyi, Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker. A total of 90 entries had been received from young scientists aged 22 - 35 from 30 different countries.  

The European Young Chemist Award aims to recognise the excellent research being carried out by young scientists working in the chemical sciences. It is sponsored by the Società Chimica Italiana and was organised by the European Young Chemists Network Panel chaired by Bruno Pignataro, Italy.