Vicky Montiel-Palma

Virginia Montiel-Palma studied chemistry at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM where she graduated with honors. Her undergraduate dissertation project, supervised by Professor Juventino J. García-Alejandre, consisted on the reactivity studies of thiaplatinacycles derived of thiophene and benzothiophene species.

She then moved to the University of York, United Kingdom, where she carried out PhD studies under the supervision of Professor Robin Perutz. At York she was recipient of an Overseas Research Student Award for three years. Her research dealt with the formation of reaction intermediates in low temperature matrixes from the photochemical irradiation of transition metal (group 8) hydrides and carbonyl precursors and involved the use of time resolved spectroscopy, flash photolysis and ultrafast techniques coupled with multinuclear modern NMR methods.

She obtained her PhD degree  and then moved to the Laboratoire de Chimie de Coordination du CNRS in France for a postdoctoral position working on transition metal sigma–borane complexes and their catalytic applications in the group of Dr Sylviane Sabo-Etienne and Dr Bruno Chaudret.

After returning to Mexico, she worked in the R&D department of the largest Mexican paint industry, where she conducted work on Co and Sn carboxylates for industrial applications. She then joined the Faculty of Science of the Chemical Research Instiute (CIQ) of UAEM where she now holds a permanent position and is the Head of the Graduate School. From August 2018, she became Assitant Professor at the Department of Chemistry at the Mississippi State University.

Her research interests are in organometallic synthesis with focus on transition metal complexes of new polyfunctional phosphinosilane, phosphinostannane ligands. She has authored 37 publications and has graduated one PhD, six Masters and ten BSc students. She currently supervises the research projects of 1 BSc, 1 Masters (MPhil) and 4 PhD students. She belongs to the National Research System (SNI, level 2 out of 3).