Professor Yves Queneau is a Senior Research Director at CNRS. He has published more than 200 articles, book chapters & patents and is an editor for the SPR book series Carbohydrate Chemistry of RSC. He awards include the CNRS Bronze Medal (1994), the “Europol'Agro" Prize for Scientific Innovation (1998), CNRS reward for scientific excellence (2010), CNRS reward for doctoral supervision (2014) and the Lu Jiaxi Lecture award from the college of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering of the University of Xiamen (2015).
Among Green Chemistry principles, one is to encourage the use renewable resources in place of fossil ones. With respect to synthetic chemistry, this means using biomass-derived materials as starting points for the design of chemical products and intermediates. In the lecture, we will make a focus on recent examples on the use of carbohydrate-based platform molecules, notably 5-HMF, and how its chemical sensitivity can be overcome. Applications cover either novel surfactants or nitrogen-containing heterocyclic compounds.
