Our group is driven by the passion of discovering new reactivity in organic chemistry, especially using catalysis. Basing on high energy molecules, such as strained rings or cyclic hypervalent iodine reagents for electrophilic alkynylation and other transformations, we develop non-conventional bond disconnections for the synthesis of important building blocks and bioactive molecules, as well as the modification of biomolecules. We also control the regioselective functionalization of alkenes and alkynes using in situ tethering approaches. Regular group meetings and seminars allow us to share and enhance our knowledge and love of organic chemistry.
(Current open positions: 2 PhD positions in peptide/protein modifications with a start in Fall 2025 and one postdoc position open to all research areas of the group with a start in January 2026. Only applications following the guidelines will be considered.)
LCSO on Twitter (Waser Group@LcsoLab)
Latest News
April 1: Welcome to Annick Delmonaco, our new administrative assistant, and to Carolin Veras, who started her apprenticeship!
March 26: Farewell to Véronique Bujard, the administrative assistant at LCSO for the last 13 years. A huge thank you!
March 3: Welcome to our new master thesis students, Hugo Senelle from ENSCM and Lucie Orain from EPFL.
January 31: Vladyslav Smyrnov successfully defended his PhD thesis. He is the twenty-ninth PhD student to obtain their degree at LCSO. Congratulations!
January 31: Congrats to Pierre for winning a poster presentation award at the Swiss Industrial Chemistry Symposium 2025!
January 31: Congrats to Christine for winning a poster presentation award at the 2nd EFMC International Symposium on Chemical Biology!
January 29: Pierre has successfully passed his final PhD exam. Congratulations!
January 20: Carlo has successfully passed his candidacy exam. Congratulations!
January 18: Congrats to Josh for winning a poster presentation award at the Swiss Snow Symposium 2025!
January 8: Tin has successfully passed his final PhD exam. Congratulations!
January 2: Now in Angewandte Chemie, the photocatalyzed azidofunctionalization of alkenes developed by Pierre together with Alexandre. (DOI: /10.1002/anie.202420455)
2024
November 25: The traditional Christmas dinner of LCSO has taken place with raclette at the refuge d’Ecublens.
November 25: The work of Emma on the diastereoselective synthesis of N-heterocycle substituted cyclobutanes has been accepted in Chem. Eur. J. (DOI: 10.1002/chem.202403986).
November 22: Diana Cavalli successfully defended her PhD thesis. She is the twenty-eight PhD student to obtain their degree at LCSO. Congratulations!
November 21: Jérôme Waser has been named best teacher in the chemistry and chemical engineering section at EPFL for 2024. Congratulations! Read the interview.
October 31: The full studies of Tin, Duncan and André on the direct photoexcitation of carbonyl cyclopropanes with computation insights from Matt has been accepted in Angewandte Chemie. (DOI: /10.1002/anie.202417719)
October 19: The work of Xiangdong combining CpBX reagents with gold and silver catalysis was just published in JACS. (DOI: /10.1021/jacs.4c10996)
October 17: Diana has successfully passed her final PhD exam. Congratulations!
October 6: The review of Nieves on the interface of (pseudo)cyclic hypervalent iodine and carbene chemistry is now published in Synthesis. (DOI: 10.1055/a-2418-8285)
October 1: Nina Aregger and Valentas Olikauskas joined the group as PhD students. Welcome!
October 1: Josh has successfully passed his candidacy exam. Congratulations!
September 27: The LCSO Alumni meeting took place at EPFL, bringing together alumni both online and in person, it was wonderful to reconnect and celebrate!
September 18: Vlad has successfully passed his final PhD exam. Congratulations!
September 15: After his master’s internship last spring, Clément Tanguy joined the group as a PhD student. Welcome back!
September 2: Jozef Kristek, from the Pospisil Lab, joined the group as a visiting PhD student. Ohla Mykhailenko also started her master’s thesis. Welcome!
August 31: Congrats to Xingyu for winning a runner-up oral presentation award at the Peptide Therapeutics Forum 2024!
August 15: Tether chemistry alert: the work of Helena, Mikus and Lucas on endo vs exo selective carboamination of propargylic alcohols is now accepted in Angewandte Chemie. (DOI: 10.1002/anie.202411383)
August 9: Xingyu Liu successfully defended his PhD thesis. He is the twenty-seventh PhD student to obtain their degree at LCSO. Congratulations!
August 8: We had fun at the LCSO Summer group outing doing a Foxtrail in Thun.
June 13: How to access more substituted aminocyclobutanes? The latest work of Emma, a strategy based on a Ficini reaction/hydrogenation sequence is now published in Chem. Eur. J. (DOI: 10.1002/chem.202401810)
June 4: Xingyu has won the award for the best poster presentation at the SNE Chem Bio retreat. Congratulations!
May 29: Xingyu with the help of Olha and Adriana developed new non-natural amino acids containing an EBx reagent for solid and solution phase peptide synthesis, leading to new ways towards macrocycles, now accepted in Angewandte Chemie. (DOI: 10.1002/anie.202404747)
May 28: The work of Vladyslav on accessing cyclopropeniums via a radical-polar crossover approach is now in Angewandte Chemie. (DOI: 10.1002/anie.202404265)
May 27: The work of Stefano on the annulation of BCBs with dienes has been published in Chemical Science. (DOI: 10.1039/D4SC02767A)
May 23: Najung has successfully passed her candidacy exam. Congratulations!
May 23: Elusive sigma-type cyclopropenium equivalents accessed via a new hypervalent iodine reagent (CpBX), and gold-catalyzed reactions. The work of Xiangdong with computation from Matt is now in Nature Chemistry. (DOI: 10.1038/s41557-024-01535-8)
May 14: The last work of Diana on the synthesis of lactones via an organic-dye catalyzed alkynylative cyclization is now published in Organic Letters. (DOI: 10.1021/acs.orglett.4c01078)
April 12: Julien Borrel successfully defended his PhD thesis. He is the twenty-sixth PhD student to obtain their degree at LCSO. Congratulations!
April 3: In his latest paper in Beilstein JOC, part of the special issue on hypervalent iodine, Julien thoroughly details the complex journey to determine the optimal conditions for the azido-alkynylation of alkenes (DOI: 10.3762/bjoc.20.64)
February 9: The last work of Pierre and Raphael together with Angel and Ruben (Zhu group) on the Cu- and Fe-catalyzed benzylic C-H azidations is now published in Helvetica. (DOI: /10.1002/hlca.202400004)
January 21: Christine has won the award for the best poster presentation at the Swiss Snow Symposium 2024. Congratulations!
January 15: Carlo Baldassari joined the group as a PhD student. Welcome!