Biographical report

María Dolores Díaz de Villegas was born in Zaragoza, Spain, in 1959 and studied chemistry at the University of Zaragoza from 1976 until 1981. In 1982 she obtained her M.Sc. degree in Organic Chemistry with the thesis “Enantioselective synthesis of Valine by homogeneous asymmetric hydrogenation” and in 1985 she completed her Ph.D. in Chemistry on new synthetic approached to the synthesis of amino acids working with Prof. C. Cativiela and Prof. E. Meléndez in the same University. She was awarded the price from the University of Zaragoza for the Faculty of Chemistry doctoral thesis. After her doctoral studies she worked as Assistant Professor until in 1989 she was appointed Tenior Researcher of the Spanish Council of Scientific Research at the Materials Science Institute in Zaragoza, where in 2001 was promoted to Senior Research Scientist. Her main research interest is asymmetric synthesis and has been focused in the development of new synthetic methodologies to the asymmetric synthesis nitrogen containing compounds with different structures. The aim of these syntheses is to gain access to potential biologically active compounds, and organocatalysts and chiral ligands for catalytic processes. Among studied synthetic approaches to the asymmetric synthesis of nitrogen containing compounds it is worth mentioning Diels-Alder and cyclopropanation reactions of chiral oxazolones, alkylation of chiral cianoesters and nucleophilic additions to chiral imines.