Giovanni Gambera

Giovanni achieved his Degree in Pharmaceutcal Chemistry at the University of Catania in October 2000 discussing a thesis about the synthesis of new chiral auxiliaries. After a couple of short contract projects by which he worked on the synthesis of nucleoside analogues, in April 2002 he moved to the Department of Organic Chemistry of the Loughborough University (U.K.) as a PhD student. Under the supervision of Prof. P.C.B. Page, during the following three years he worked on the total synthesis of the framework of Guaianolides, a family of naturally occurring biologically active compounds. In 2005, after his PhD, for six months Giovanni worked as synthetic organic chemist at Charnwood Molecular ltd, then he moved back to Italy, where in 2006 he started to collaborate with ICB-CNR (Catania) as a research fellow under the supervision of Dr Giovanni Nicolosi. Giovanni worked at ICB-CNR until 2016 at the beginning as a research fellow, then as a post-doc and finally, from 2014 to 2016, as a fixed term researcher. Topics of his research have been synthesis of glycerophosphoinositol’s analogues and derivatives, enzymatic biotransformations, synthesis and functionalisation of naturally occurring compounds, exploitation of waste material from food industry. After the experience at the ICB-CNR, from September 2017 to January 2022 Giovanni worked as a Medicinal Chemist at Vera Salus Ricerca s.r.l. where his research was about the project and synthesis of bioactive molecules and materials for the human health. In February 2022, Giovanni moved back to ICB-CNR as a permanent researcher. Giovanni enjoys reading, photography, sports and the good food.

• Hydroxytyrosol recovery from olive mill wastewater: Process optimization and development of a pilot plant. CLEAN-Soil, Air, Water; 2017, 45 (4), 1600042; G. Fava, M.D. Di Mauro, M. Spampinato, D. Biondi, G. Gambera, G. Centonze, R. Maggiore and N. D’Antona.

• Glycerophosphoinositols: total synthesis of the first fluorescent probe derivative. Synlett. 2014, 2111, G. Greco, N. D’Antona, G. Gambera, G. Nicolosi.

• A novel chemo-multienzymatic synthesis of bioactive cyclophellitol and epi-cyclophellitol in both enantiopure forms. Tetrahedron Asymm. 2010, 21, 2448, N. D’Antona, R. Morrone, P. Bovicelli, G. Gambera, D. Kubak, L. Martinkova

• An ytterbium-catalysed Intramolecular aldehyde–ene reaction approach to the guaianolide and pseudoguaianolide diterpenoids: Synthesis of the guaiane skeleton, Synlett., 2006, 3411, P. C. B. Page, G. Gambera, C. M. Hayman, M. Edgar.

• Synthesis of new chiral bicyclic sultams and their use as auxiliaries in asymmetric conjugate addition of Grignard reagents, Tetrahedron: Asymm. 2002, 13, 1915, U. Chiacchio, A. Corsaro, G. Gambera, A. Rescifina, A. Piperno, R. Romeo, G. Romeo.