Darren Dixon receives Charles Rees Award

Congratulations to Professor Darren Dixon, who has been announced as the 2024 recipient of the ‘Charles Rees Award’ for excellence in the field of heterocyclic chemistry.

The Heterocyclic and Synthesis Group of the Royal Society of Chemistry has announced today that Prof Dixon will receive this award for his ‘innovative and creative work on structurally complex heterocyclic alkaloid natural product synthesis’.

Prof Dixon’s unique and creative work focuses on the discovery and invention of new, broadly useful, catalyst-enabled synthetic methodologies and their application to the synthesis of molecules of importance in nature, biology and medicine.

The Charles Rees Award for 2024 is given for his impressive body of innovative work on structurally complex heterocyclic alkaloid natural product synthesis, and the major methodological discoveries that these works spawned including using amides and lactams as reactants for C-C bond forming reactions, desymmetrising Michael additions and enantioselective prototropic shifts.

Prof Dixon will receive his award at the 2025 Grasmere meeting of the Heterocyclic and Synthesis Group.