Rafaela Bechara obtained her PhD in Chemistry from École Polytechnique (2024), devoting her research to the grafting of salen complexes onto macroporous silicon by atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), with a view to applications in asymmetric catalysis, under the supervision of Anne-Chantal Gouget, Emmanuelle Schulz and Philippe Roger. Prior to her PhD, she obtained a Master's degree in Chemistry from the École Polytechnique (2021) and a Master's degree in Chemistry from the University of São Paulo (2020). Rafaela completed her Bachelor's degree in Chemistry at the Federal University of São Paulo, including an 18 month period of international mobility at DePaul University and Stony Brook University, USA.
Her main areas of interest are organic synthesis applied to catalysis and the development of hybrid materials, in particular organosilicon compounds.
She then joined the laboratory of Prof. Fensterbank in 2024, where she implements new photochemical activation processes to promote new reactivities. This work is part of a fundamental research approach aimed at the development of non-natural amino acids and their applications. She is also interested in the design of amino acid derivatives based on innovative bismuth chemistry.
