The CNRS silver medal distinguishes researchers for the originality, quality and importance of their work recognized nationally and internationally. This year, Alexander Kuhn is one of the two scientists from Aquitaine laboratories who will receive this award. Back in portrait on his journey.

He has achieved the rank of full professor at the Institute of Molecular Sciences at the University of Bordeaux, CNRS and Bordeaux INP, Alexander Kuhn designs (bio)electrochemical systems with new properties.

       His works play with the synergy between chemistry, physics and a bit of biology. He has been shaping, since his PhD thesis in 1994 at the Paul Pascal Research Center in Bordeaux, electrochemical systems with surprising, even unprecedented properties. For example, he improved and extended the synthesis of Janus objects, with surfaces having at least two different physico-chemical properties, which were then used for applications ranging from analytical chemistry to catalysis, including the controlled displacement of objects. He thus allowed for example thin sheets of polymers to move, constituting swimmers able to detect the chirality of molecules in solution. Alexander Kuhn also developed together with his collaborators the first nanostructured metallic surface promoting, up to 98%, the production of an enantiomer during an electroorganic synthesis. These results are of great interest for example for the pharmaceutical industry, which are always looking for new solutions to discriminate chiral molecules.