Skip to main content
Jordi Poater

Jordi Poater

Universitat de Barcelona

Experimental Sciences & Mathematics

Born in 1977. I got my PhD in Chemistry in 2003 at the Universitat de Girona (UdG) with a thesis on the analysis of chemical bonding and aromaticity of organic systems with tools based on the electron-pair density. Next I moved to the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VUA), with a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship, where I carried out research on the DNA replication mechanism by means of Kohn-Sham molecular orbital theory complemented with quantitative bond energy decomposition analyses. In 2008 I was awarded with a Ramón y Cajal tenure-track position at the Institute of Computational Chemistry and Catalysis of the UdG. Afterwards I was appointed Senior Associate Researcher at the Department of Theoretical Chemistry and Amsterdam Center for Multiscale Modeling of the VUA. I have published 159 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals, which have received more than 6.200 citations. My H-Index is 41, and I appear as “Scientist” at the Essential Science Indicators.


Research interests

My research takes off from two main lines, which are interconnected and reinforce each other. First, the study of aromaticity in organic and metal systems, with tools derived from the electron-pair density, with the purpose of analyzing the electronic structure and molecular bonding in a wide range of molecular systems. Afterwards, I have become an expert in the application of Kohn-Sham molecular orbital theory complemented with quantitative bond energy decomposition analyses to biological issues. In particular, the study of the DNA replication mechanism has become my main research line. I have got closer to experiment by studying the selectivity in DNA replication mechanism taking into study the steric shape, hydrogen bonds, pi-stacking and solvent effects in DNA bases.

Selected publications

– Oberdorf K, Hanft A, Ramler J, Krummenacher I, Bickelhaupt FM, Poater J & Lichtenberg C 2021, ‘Bismuth Amides Mediate Facile and Highly Selective Pn-Pn Radical-Coupling Reactions (Pn=N, P, As)‘, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, vol. 60, pp 6441-6445.

– Tu D, Li J, Sun F, Yan H, Poater J & Solà M 2021, “Cage-···Cage- Interaction: Boron Cluster-Based Noncovalent Bond and Its Applications in Solid-State Materials“, JACS Au, vol. 1, no. 11, pp 2047-2057.

– Jian J, Hammink R, McKenzie CJ, Bickelhaupt FM, Poater J & Mecinovic J 2021, ‘Do Sulfonamides Interact with Aromatic Rings?‘, Chemistry A European Journal, vol. 27, pp 5721-5729.

– Zborowski KK & Poater J 2021 “Pyrrole and Pyridine in the Water Environment-Effect of Discrete and Continuum Solvation Models“, ACS Omega, vol. 6, no. 38, pp 24693-24699.

– Solà M, Duran M & Poater J 2021, ‘The energy components of the extended transition state energy decomposition analysis are path functions: the case of water tetramer‘, Theoretical Chemistry Accounts, vol. 140, 33.

Poater J,  Heitkämper J, Poater A, Maraval, V & Chauvin R 2021, “Zwitterionic Aromaticity on Azulene Extrapolated to carbo-Azulene“, European Journal of Organic Chemistry, no. 46, pp 6450-6458.

– Blokker E, Sun X, Poater J, van der Schuur, JM, Hamlin TA & Bickelhaupt FM 2021, ‘The Chemical Bond: When Atom Size Instead of Electronegativity Difference Determines Trend in Bond Strength‘, Chemistry A European Journal, vol. 27, pp 15616-15622.


Selected research activities

– PI of MINECO research grant (2020-2023).

– Co-PI (garante) of María de Maeztu Grant to IQTCUB (2M€, 2018-2022).

– Appointed member of theYoung Researchers Forum of the Real Academia Nacional de Medicina de España (RANM) in recognition of my research career.

– Front Cover in Chem. Eur. J.

– Delivered 4 invited lectures in international conferences.

– Member of 2 PhD commitees.

ICREA Memoir 2021