José
Luis Mascareñas is full Professor in Chemistry at the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC, Galicia, Spain) since 2005, and scientific director of the Center for research in biological chemistry and molecular materials (CiQUS) 2014-2024. He completed his PhD at the University of Santiago in 1988, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University (USA) under the supervision of Prof. Paul Wender (1989-1991). He has been visiting scholar in Harvard University (USA) in the summers of 1992 and 1995, and visiting scientist in the University of Cambridge (UK, 2009) and the MIT (USA, 2013).
He has supervised 47 PhD theses, published over 250 articles in peer reviewed journals and wrote 26 patent applications (16 granted, 3 licensed). He has delivered more than 190 invited lectures. Along recent years he has received several awards, including: Organic Chemistry award of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (RSEQ, 2009), Advanced grant of the ERC (2014), Galician of the year "Grupo Correo Gallego" (2014), Gold medal of the University of Santiago (2014), Gold Medal of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (2015), award of the Galicia Critic (2018), Research Medal of the Royal Galician Academy of Sciences (2019), EIC Transition (2024) and four further tech-transfer grants: ERC Proof-of-Concept grant (2020), AEI 'Prueba de concepto' (2021), CaixaResearch Consolidate (2021) and AES2024/DTS-VTP by the ISCIII (2024). He has recently, June 2025, received the esteemed Rei Jaume I award
(Fundamental Research modality) for his contribution to the
organometallic chemistry and metal-catalyzed chemistry in living cells. In 2017 he was selected as member of the European Academy of sciences (EURASC), and Spanish responsible of EUCHEMS in Organic Chemistry. He is member of several editorial boards and foundations, founder/first president of the Spanish group of Chemical Biology of the RSEQ and, since 2021, vicepresident of the RSEQ. In 2025, he has been the president of the prestigious 58th Bürgenstock Conference, SCS.
Success of former students and researchers: One PhD student got an ERC (StG 2019), and three more were finalists; eleven former researchers got the "Ramón y Cajal" fellowship; seven former students got a MSCA postdoctoral fellowship; many others got very distinguished prizes and awards, for instance, four 'RSEQ young researchers' awardees, one 'Thieme Chemistry Award' recipient, one ‘Human Frontier Science Program Career Development Award’ recipient, one 'European Young Chemistry Award' recipient, eight 'Lilly research award for PhD students' recipients, and many others.
His current research interests split into two programs: the discovery and development of metal-catalyzed processes, and a chem-biomed program in cellular catalysis and biosupramolecular chemistry.