Draft:Olalla Vázquez

Olalla Vázquez (born September, 3, 1981, in Chantada, Spain) is a Spanish scientist

Biography
Although born in Chantada, her parent's homeland, she moved to Pontevedra when she was 4 years old and studied in the highschool IES Valle-Inclán. She graduated in Chemistry from the University of Santiago de Compostela in 2004 (with honors). In 2005 she received the FPU fellowship granted by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science for PhD students. During her PhD, she worked on the design and synthesis of new specific binders and fluorescent probes for DNA recognition under the supervision of Prof. José Luis Mascareñas and Prof. Eugenio Vázquez. In the course of her predoctoral studies, she made two stays as a visiting PhD student: one at Harvard University, in the group of Prof. Gregory L. Verdine in 2006 and another at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, in the group of Prof. Oliver Seitz in 2008. In 2010 she defended her PhD dissertation, obtaining Summa cum laude.She received the Marie Curie postdoctoral research fellowship and returned to the group of Professor Oliver Seitz to explore the possibilities of using RNA template-directed reactions to synthesize cytotoxic peptides in the context of cancer therapy. In summer 2014 she was appointed to a newly established tenure-track Assistant Professorship (W1) at Philipps-Universität Marburg, where she was entrusted with the mission of managing the new division of Chemical Biology with Prof. Eric Meggers. In April 2020 Olalla successfully passed her tenured evaluation, and consequently, she was promoted to Associate Professor of Chemical Biology (W2) in January 2021. In 2022 Olalla was offered a Full Professorship for Organic Chemistry for Protein Research at Paris Lodron University Salzburg, which was declined for a Full Professorship at Philipps-Universität Marburg (Germany). Since 2023 Olalla is officially Full Professor of Chemical Biology (W3).

Service for the community
She is committed to fostering equity, diversity and inclusion in science and passionated to bring research to the class.

Together with Prof. Carla Fröhlich (American Cottrell Scholar), both teacher-scholar (reference https://rescorp.org/cottrell-scholars ) ensured lead Building Bridges Workshop to support new faculty members in Germany.

Portrait of Olalla from NCCR Chemical Biology.

She is strong advocate of Chemical Biology and consequently she is member of the CheBio Steering Committees:


 * EFMC Chemical Biology Initiative.
 * DECHEMA GDCh Chemical Biology.
 * EuChemS Chemistry in Life Science.

Prizes

 * 2009: VII Prize Lilly.
 * 2011: Research Award Diputación Provincial de Pontevedra.
 * 2012: Joven Químico Europeo, medalla de plata.
 * 2016: Fulbright-Cottrell.
 * 2017: Premio Joven Investigador SPP1926.
 * 2018: Biotechnology and Nanotechnology Prize, Marburgo, with Leon Schulte.
 * 2020: Prize for the Best Young European Researcher in Biological Chemistry.
 * 2020: Premio al Nuevo Investigador Líder de Grupo de la Real Sociedad Española de Química.
 * 2021: Premio Ars Lengindi Fakultäten.
 * 2022: EFMC Prize for a Young Chemical Biologist in Academia.