About Filo

Filo was born in Fivizzano, Italy, in 1987 and grew up in the small village of Serricciolo in Lunigiana, a beautiful land in the North of Tuscany. He received his M.Sc. degree in Pharmacy with summa cum laude from the Università degli Studi di Parma in 2011. During his years in Parma, Filo matured his passion for organic chemistry and in particular for complex molecule synthesis. He then moved to bonnie Scotland where he pursued his graduate studies working in Professor J. Stephen Clark’s group at the University of Glasgow and earned his Ph.D. in chemistry in 2015. His graduate research focused on the total synthesis of complex biologically active natural products including the amphidinolide T family of anti-cancer natural products, advanced fragments of anti-tumor agents amphidinolide C and F, and the A–D ring system of the anti-fungal gambieric acids, a family of complex polycyclic ether natural products. In the Summer of 2015, Filo decided to move across the pond and work as postdoctoral research associate in the group of Prof. Amir Hoveyda at Boston College. In January 2019, Prof. Hoveyda decided to establish a second research group in Strasbourg, France, and Filo was offered the position of Senior Research Associate to manage and supervise the European branch of the group. In his time in the Hoveyda group, he has focused on the development of practical and high-impact catalytic transformations for the facile and efficient synthesis of complex bioactive compounds. In June 2022, Filo returned to the USA as Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Dallas and CPRIT Scholar. Filo’s research focuses on the development of new synthesis logics and chemical methods for the efficient, scalable and concise synthesis of complex bioactive natural products and their analogs.