Group Members

David Rombach grew up in Karlsruhe (Germany) in 1986 and studied chemistry at LMU Munich and KIT Karlsruhe. After scientific adventures in fluorine chemistry with Tobias Ritter (Harvard University) and the synthesis of GluK2 antagonists with Lennart Bunch (University of Copenhagen), he focused on the synthesis and incorporation of photoswitches into DNA during his diploma thesis (Diplom, 2015). Inspired by photochemistry and organofluorine chemistry, he joined Hans-Achim Wagenknecht's group to work on photoredoxic catalytic activation of SF₆ for pentafluorosulfanylation chemistry during his PhD (2018, summa cum laude).  In 2019, he joined Antonio Togni's group at ETH Zurich as a postdoctoral fellow to continue his work on hypervalent sulfur and iodine compounds and trifluoroacetylation chemistry. In 2020, he started his independent research (SNSF Spark) in the group of Erick M. Carreira at ETH Zurich to study novel SF₅-containing molecules. In July 2023, David started as a group leader at the University of Zurich (SNSF Ambizione).