Mazzarella competed for the award with an essay that had to describe an original research project or an idea involving a scientific database. The winning essays were selected by a jury that evaluated the relevance, originality and innovativeness of the proposals. He earned second place together with Alessandra Benassi, with equal merit. Mazzarella described research on expanding the potential of established tools of asymmetric catalysis by photochemical activation. Benassi presented a study on the recognition and binding to quadruplex DNA by small molecules, as inhibitors of genes involved in tumour development. Daniele Del Giudice ranked first with his research on the application of activated carboxylic acids to obtain temporal control over pH-dependent supramolecular systems.

Daniele Mazzarella was born in Foggia, Italy. Daniele received his bachelor degree in Chemistry at La Sapienza, University of Rome and his master degree cum laude in Organic Chemistry and Synthetic Methodologies at the Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna. During his master studies he also spent one year in Japan, working on the revalorization of non-edible biomasses at Nippon Kayaku Co. Ltd. In 2016, Daniele joined Prof. Paolo Melchiorre’s group at the ICIQ (Tarragona, Spain) to carry on doctoral studies in the fields of organocatalysis and synthetic photochemistry. After having obtained his PhD degree cum laude in 2020, Daniele joined the group of Prof. Timothy Noël at the UvA, where he is currently pursuing the development of novel asymmetric electrochemical and photochemical transformations in a microfluidic environment.

Website Noël Research Group