News from Recent Group Members

March 20, 2026March 20, 2026moranlab

Lots of good news from recent group members.

Former PhD student Dr. Emilie Werner was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowship to work with Prof. Igor Larossa at the University of Manchester.

Former PhD student Dr. Cyprien Muller, now a postdoctoral fellow at ISTA with Prof. Rafal Klajn, was selected to attend the prestigious 75th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting.

Former PhD student Dr. Maciej Piejko has received a Walter-Benjamin Postdoctoral Fellowship to work with Prof. Robert Mayer (also a group alumni) at TUM.

Former research associate (CR) Dr. David Leboeuf was promoted to Director of Research (DR) at the CNRS. He has led his own group at LIMA since 2024.

Keep up the great work, everyone!

Sinan wins best poster prize at POMS 2025

November 16, 2025November 17, 2025moranlab

Congrats to Sinan Bascil for receiving the prize for best poster at the 53rd Physical Organic Mini-Symposium (POMS), an annual national conference for students, postdocs and faculty doing physical organic chemistry. Sinan’s poster featured his work on improving our ability to monitor vibrational strong coupling experiments by NMR.

New summer students

May 5, 2025November 14, 2025moranlab

A warm welcome to Rim El Alaoui and Isaac Utovac, who join our lab for the summer. Rim is a second year student at uOttawa who won an NSERC USRA award. Isaac is a third year coop student at uOttawa. Welcome to both!

Valentyn wins SCF Alsace Thesis Prize

February 18, 2025moranlab

Congrats to recent PhD graduate Valentyn Pozhydaiev, who has won the best PhD thesis prize from the Alsace chapter of the French Chemical Society (SCF) for his thesis entitled “New Reactions of Aminofunctionalization of Alkenes”.

Émilie wins L’Oréal-UNESCO Award For Women in Science

October 8, 2024October 15, 2024moranlab

Recent PhD graduate Émilie Werner has been named as a winner of the Prix Jeunes Talents France 2024 L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science. Congrats, Émilie!

Cyprien wins ISTA Postdoc Fellowship Award

July 26, 2024April 6, 2025moranlab

Recent PhD graduate, Cyprien Muller, has been selected as a 2024 ISTA-Fellow. The fellowship is given to 10 outstanding recent PhD graduates per year who wish to carry out their postdoctoral research at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria. Cyprien will hold his award in the laboratory of Prof. Rafal Klajn. Congrats, Cyprien!

Joseph Receives Distinguished Alumni Award from UT Austin

June 14, 2024August 29, 2025moranlab

Joseph visited the University of Texas at Austin for the first time since his postdoctoral days with Prof. Michael Krische. He gave a seminar and received the Distinguished Alumni Award from his former advisor.

Joseph named a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair at the University of Ottawa

March 13, 2024July 25, 2024moranlab

After 12 wonderful years in France, the group will move its main activities to the University of Ottawa, (Canada) where Joseph was recently named a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair. The group will maintain a small lab in Strasbourg until the end of Joseph’s ongoing ERC Consolidator Grant. See the press release here.

Maciej wins a JSPS Fellowship

February 6, 2024March 4, 2024moranlab

Congrats to PhD student Maciej Piejko, who has won a short term fellowship to conduct research at Hokkaido University later this year!

Joris wins best talk prize at the Journée des Doctorants

November 30, 2023February 1, 2024moranlab

Congrats to Joris Zimmermann for receiving the prize for best talk at the Journée des Doctorants, an annual symposium where PhD students from across the chemical sciences in Strasbourg present their work. Joris spoke about his work on the mechanism of the phosphorylation of pyruvate to phosphoenolpyruvate, recently published in Chemical Science.