About Us
The Poranne Group is a computational physical organic chemistry group at the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. We study polycyclic aromatic systems and the concept at their heart, aromaticity: how it relates to other molecular properties and to reactivity, and how it can be harnessed to design new molecules.
We develop intuitive methods and user-friendly tools for characterizing, interpreting and predicting molecular properties, and connect these abstract properties to real-world synthetic strategies. Much of our work is data-driven: we built The COMPAS Project, the first computational database of polycyclic aromatic systems, and use it with machine-learning and deep-learning models for molecular design and discovery.
Together with collaborators around the world, we also investigate reactivity and reaction mechanisms, from the role of aromaticity in organometallic catalysis to the rational design of new aromatic and antiaromatic materials.
The group believes in an inclusive and collaborative culture, where team-work and mutual respect are top priorities. We are always open to receiving new members who are excited about learning and who are motivated to work towards advancing our understanding of chemistry and molecular design.
The group started in 2017 as an independent sub-group at ETH Zürich, and has been at the Technion since October 2021.