The Ruffoni Research Group

Alessandro (Ale) was born in Morbegno, Italy. He graduated in Chemistry of Pharmaceuticals from the University of Milan, where he also completed his Ph.D. in the group of Prof. Francesca Clerici, working on the synthesis and structural studies of small peptide-based drugs. During his Ph.D., he spent a year as a visiting researcher in Prof. Phil Baran’s group at The Scripps Research Institute in California, working into the development of innovative reagents for the synthesis of fluorinated heteroarylether bioisosteres.
In 2016, he joined IRB Barcelona as a Marie Curie COFUND Fellow, where he investigated the biophysics of androgen receptor biomolecular condensates and designed novel inhibitors for castration-resistant prostate cancer under the supervision of Prof. Antoni Riera and Prof. Xavier Salvatella.
He joined Prof. Daniele Leonori’s group as a Marie Curie Individual Fellow at the University of Manchester, working on groundbreaking photoredox catalytic processes for carbon-nitrogen bond formation and late-stage C–H functionalization. In 2021, he moved to RWTH Aachen University as a young group leader alongside Prof. Leonori, where he pioneered novel concepts in synthetic photochemistry and photopermutation chemistry.
Recently, Alessandro was appointed as Assistant Professor at Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel. His research group is dedicated to pushing the frontiers of catalysis by developing innovative concepts in photochemistry and designing new reagents for radical chemistry.