François Lévesque's Biography

François Lévesque, Associate Principal Scientist Process Chemistry, Merck & Co.

François is an associate principal scientist leading the flow chemistry team within the enabling technologies group at Merck & Co., Inc. The flow team works closely with the larger chemistry organization to explore the synthesis of challenging bioactive substrates for late stage discovery and to implement flow chemistry processes in late stage and commercial route development. Prior to joining Merck François worked at UCB in Belgium where he took part in the implementation of continuous flow chemistry tools for medicinal chemists.

François started to explore the full potential of flow chemistry during his post-doctoral fellowship at Max-Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces under the guidance of Pr. Peter H. Seeberger. While in Germany, François worked on the generation of singlet oxygen and the synthesis of Artemisinin in flow. He also explored high temperature reactions, photochemical transformation and the direct coupling of a flow reactor with simulated moving-bed chromatography (SMB). He holds a PhD, MSc and BSc in Chemistry from the Université de Sherbrooke in Canada. His PhD thesis focused on the synthesis of complex polycyclic alkaloids from simple linear precursors.