Sílvia Osuna

Prof. Osuna is an ICREA research professor at the Institut de Química Computacional i Catàlisi (IQCC) at the Universitat de Girona (UdG). Her research is based on the rational design of enzymes. Osuna received her PhD in 2010 from UdG at the Institut de Química Computacional (IQC). In 2010, she moved to the group of Prof. Houk at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship where she started to work on the computational design and modelling of enzymes. Her group was created thanks to the awarded 2015 European Research Council project - Starting grant project (ERC-2015-StG-679001) and focuses on the development of new computational tools and approaches for computational enzyme design. Sílvia has more than 100 research publications, and has been recently awarded the 2023 Young Spanish National Award in Chemistry, 2021 EuChemS lecture award, the Catalan National Research Award – Young Talent 2019 from Fundació Catalana de Recerca i Innovació (FCRi), among others. Her group is currently funded by a European Research Council project - Consolidator Grant, two ERC- Proof of Concept grants, and two I+D Spanish MINECO projects. She has supervised many undergraduate and master’s students, as well as 10 PhD students and is supervising 8 PhD candidates. She has established important collaborations with major players in the field of biocatalysis and enzyme engineering/enzyme evolution, such as Prof. Manfred Reetz, Prof. Sabine Flitsch, Prof. Nicolas Turner, Prof. Romas Kazlauskas, Prof. Bernhard Hauer and Prof. Reinhard Sterner, among others. Her research as independent researcher has uncovered the importance of conformational dynamics of enzyme catalysts and its relevance for enzyme function. Most importantly, Osuna contributed significantly to the advancement of available computational methods for enzyme design.

February 2025