Andre de Vries's Biography

Andre de Vries, Commercial Director, InnoSyn B.V.

Dr André H.M. de Vries, born in 1967, received a PhD in organic chemistry in 1996 from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, under the supervision of Prof. Ben L. Feringa on asymmetric catalysis. During his PhD study he introduced the monodentate chiral phosphoramidites, (now known as MonoPhos®) as highly successful ligands for conjugate addition reactions of dialkylzinc reagents to a,ß-unsaturated ketones. After a post-doctoral position in the group of John M. Brown (Oxford University) on asymmetric hydrogenations, he joined DSM in 1998.

Dr André has hold several positions within DSM. Till the end of 2011 he was the competence manager homogeneous catalysis role. In this role he was responsible for the identification of cost-effective catalysts and catalytic transformations, and the smooth application of these into production processes for the fine chemical industry.
Since the start of 2012, Dr André was the program manager Pharma R&D projects, and business manager Innosyn® Route scouting services, an independent and flexible process R&D service, especially for pharma customers, using innovative technologies in the field of bio- and chemo-catalysis and flow chemistry (e.g. 3D printed metal flow reactors).

Since May 1st, 2017, the whole R&D group spun-out to become InnoSyn BV, a fully independent process R&D service provider to the chemical industry (45 FTE). Within InnoSyn André holds the position of commercial director.

He is co-inventor of over 20 patent (applications) and has been involved in large scale application of catalytic production processes. Amongst them is the Rh-catalyzed asymmetric hydrogenation of an alpha-alkylated cinnamic acid using a member of the MonoPhos® ligand library, the same class of ligands as during his PhD studies. He is also co-author of over 40 papers in peer reviewed journals.
Dr André is married with Mary McCarthy and together they are raising two daughters (now 9 and 12 years old). In his spare time he is keen to play soccer.