Prof. Marcin Stępień is the winner of the FNP Prize!
Prof. Marcin Stępień from the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Wrocław is one of four recipients of the 2023 FNP (Foundation for Polish Science Award). He received the award in the area of chemical and material sciences for the design and preparation of new aromatic compounds with unique structures and properties.
The term “aromaticity” was first used in the second half of the 19th century to refer to a group of organic compounds characterised by a number of unusual features, one of which was a very pungent odour. Nowadays, it describes an extremely numerous class of chemical compounds whose molecules contain rings of atoms in their structure and are specifically stabilised by the presence of so-called delocalised chemical bonds. Delocalisation means that the electrons forming the bond are shared by more than two atoms, leading to a blurring of the electrons in the molecule. The presence of a delocalised bond system in an aromatic compound can be a source of useful properties, such as the ability to absorb and emit light or the ability to carry or store charge. Currently, aromatic compounds are of fundamental importance in almost all areas of organic chemistry. In industry, they are used as dyes, semiconducting materials, catalysts, and drugs.
Prof. Marcin Stępień is an internationally recognised authority, shaping the field of research on aromatic compounds. The outcome of his work, conducted on the borderline between organic synthesis, physical organic chemistry, and theoretical chemistry, was the design and subsequent synthesis of new aromatic and anti-aromatic molecules with unique structures and unusual, often three-dimensional shapes. These achievements are not only cognitively significant, but they also open up new possibilities for applications of these compounds as functional organic materials. Among the aromatic compounds synthesised by prof. Marcin Stępień there are some that in their structure imitate graphene fragments and which, due to the presence of atypical rings and atoms other than carbon, exhibit unique optical and electron properties. Prof. Stępień’s molecules may provide inspiration in the search for new organic materials, particularly functional dyes. Such materials may find a variety of applications, including in LED devices and photovoltaics, but also in medical diagnostics and phototherapy.
Prof. Marcin Stępień’s studies are not only about the successful search for new, effective methods to synthesise compounds with non-trivial architecture and often significant spatial deformations. His work also demonstrates how these unusual three-dimensional shapes of molecules affect their basic physical and chemical properties, such as aromaticity, absorption, fluorescence, motion, and physical expression of chirality. This exponentially increases our understanding of the relationship between the structure of molecules and their properties.
Biographical note:
Marcin Stępień was born in 1977 in Wrocław. In 1999, he graduated with a master’s degree from the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Wrocław, and subsequently defended his doctoral thesis and habilitation thesis there (both with distinction) and obtained the title of professor (successively in 2003, 2010 and 2017). In 2005-2006, he completed a 13-month postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. During his academic career to date, he has collaborated closely with researchers from Spain, France, Germany, Korea, China, India, and the USA, resulting in the publication of more than 30 collaborative international scientific articles. He has authored or co-authored more than 90 publications and is the recipient of many prestigious awards and scientific scholarships: the START scholarship and the “POWROTY/HOMING” and “TEAM” programmes of the Foundation for Polish Science, awards of the Minister of Education, the “Stay With Us” („Zostańcie z nami”) scholarship of the Polityka weekly, the Włodzimierz Kołos Medal and the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Award of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Since 2022 he has been a member of the Advisory Board of Angewandte Chemie, one of the most important chemistry journals. He is Head of the Department of Organic Chemistry and Chairperson of the Discipline Council at the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Wrocław. He also heads the Organic Synthesis Team (Stępień Lab), which focuses its research on functional aromatic compounds. The team, led by prof. Stępień, strives to create new aromatic hydrocarbons and heterocyclic compounds with unprecedented structures and physical and chemical properties.
The Award of the Foundation for Polish Science is granted for outstanding scientific achievements and discoveries that push the boundaries of cognition and open new cognitive perspectives, make an outstanding contribution to the civilisational and cultural progress of our country, and provide Poland with a significant place in tackling the most ambitious challenges of the contemporary world. The amount of the award is PLN 200,000.
Our sincere congratulations and best wishes for further success to the Professor!
For: Foundation for Polish Science.
Translated by Justyna Janik (student of English Studies at the University of Wrocław) as part of the translation practice.
