Nationality Belgian Doctoral advisor Leon Ghosez | Name Veronique Gouverneur | |
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Institutions University of OxfordLouis Pasteur UniversityScripps Research Institute Alma mater Universite catholique de Louvain Notable awards RSC Bader awardAstraZeneca Research Award for organic chemistryACS Award for Creative Work in Fluorine Chemistry | ||
Véronique Gouverneur (born 8 November 1964) is a professor of chemistry at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Her specialism is the chemistry of fluorine, and her research involves finding new ways to synthesise organic fluorine compounds. She leads a research group at the University and, in addition to her chair, also holds a tutorial fellowship at Merton College. Her research has received multiple professional and scholarly awards.
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Education and career
Born in Belgium, Gouverneur obtained her undergraduate degree (a Masters in chemistry), and then in 1991 her doctorate, from the Université catholique de Louvain. She moved in 1992 to the Scripps Research Institute in the USA, returning to Europe in 1994 to take a post at Louis Pasteur University in France. She joined the chemistry faculty at Oxford in 1998, becoming a Reader in 2006 and a Professor in 2008. In her own research career, she chose to focus on fluorine chemistry so as to complement other Oxford chemists, none of whom were working in that area, and because fluorine compounds have many applications, including in pharmaceutical drugs and in Positron emission tomography (PET) scans. She has also had visiting professor posts at the University of Paris X and the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry.
Awards and honours
Gouverneur won the AstraZeneca Research Award for organic chemistry in 2005. She was also the 2008 winner of the Royal Society of Chemistry's Bader award, "for her important contributions to synthetic organofluorine chemistry." In 2013, the UK's Royal Society selected her as one of 27 Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holders, providing funding until 2018 towards research on "The Importance of the Fluorine Source for Late Stage Fluorination". In 2015, Gouverneur received the American Chemical Society Award for Creative Work in Fluorine Chemistry "for her contribution to late-stage fluorination and for invigorating creatively the field of [18F] radiochemistry for applications in Positron Emission Tomography."
