Institute of Inorganic Chemistry
Staff

Prof. Dr. Roger Alberto

Universität Zürich
Anorganisch-chemisches Institut
Winterthurerstrasse 190
CH-8057 Zürich

Office   34-G-50
Laboratory:               
Tel: +41 44 63 546 31
Fax: +41 44 63 568 02
E-Mail: ariel@aci.unizh.ch

Alberto-Group Homepage

Roger Alberto was born in the city of Winterthur near Zurich in 1958 where he passed the elementary school (with success) and the gymnasium. After the Matura and three months practice at the former Ciba Geigy, he began his studies in chemistry at the ETH in Zürich. As usual during the time of the cold war, the holidays were filled up with military service or examinations. His dedication to technetium chemistry was stimulated by his passion to collect the chemical elements. His request to Prof. G. Anderegg, who later became his diploma and PhD supervisor, to have a piece of technetium metal for his collection was unsuccessful, but he did receive the opportunity to perform a Diploma thesis in technetium chemistry which was completed in 1983. Syntheses and characterization of fluoride compounds as the diploma topic led into his PhD thesis with a focus on alkoxide complexes of technetium, thus, classical coordination chemistry in an aqueous environment. After receiving his PhD in 1988, he moved to the group of Prof. W.A. Herrmann at the Technical University of Munich, as a Humboldt fellow. Surprisingly, the problem to be tackled was the synthesis of high valent organometallic Tc compounds, a problem that could be solved for H3CTcO3 but not for [Cp*TcO3]. This problem still persists and an enthusiastic student is sought to solve it. To synthesize [Tc2(CO)10] as starting material, he went to the Los Alamos National Laboratory several times to work with Dr. Al Sattelberger. Autoclave synthesis with radioactive material was impossible in Europe but in those days, at least, [Tc2(CO)10] was considered more or less inactive at LANL making chemical life easy. After running out of [Tc2(CO)10], the pivotal question arose on its synthesis at ambient pressure, a problem that further determined his life and the chemistry in which he is active today. After his Post Doc, he started working as a senior researcher in the group of Prof. P.A. Schubiger at the Institute for Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry at the Paul Scherrer Institute near Zürich. He received his “Venia Legendi” as a Privatdozent in 1998 and moved as an associate professor to the University of Zurich in 1999. In 2005 he was promoted to full professor.

He stayed as an invited scientist at the Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, was an invited professor at the Ecole National Supérieur de Chimie de Paris (ENSCP) in 2002 with Prof. G. Jaouen and at the National University of Singapore in 2003 with Prof. A. Hor. He has long standing collaborations with Mallinckrodt Med. B.V. Petten in the Netherlands and a number of other companies.

Although he has not completed his collection of the elements with metallic technetium, his main research interests are still fundamental and applied chemistry of technetium. Particular focuses are, of course, bioorganometallic chemistry with all elements, the chemistry of vitamin B12, radiopharmaceutical chemistry, aqueous organometallic chemistry and more recently, questions on light-energy conversion. In addition to chemistry, he has no personal interests in sports, but likes to go hiking in the mountains, enjoys good food and wine and collects all sorts of things in the context of science.