Chirality Medal

Jeanne Crassous (born Costante) obtained her PhD in 1996 from the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon (ENS Lyon), where she worked on the absolute configuration of bromochlorofluoromethane (CHFClBr) under the supervision of Prof. André Collet. She then completed a one-year postdoctoral fellowship on the chirality of fullerenes in the group of Prof. François Diederich at ETH Zurich (Switzerland). In 1998, she was appointed as a CNRS researcher at ENS Lyon, before joining the Institut des Sciences Chimiques de Rennes (CNRS–Université de Rennes) in 2005. She received the CNRS Research Director grade in 2010 and the Exceptional Class in 2024.

Jeanne Crassous has coordinated a French national research network (GDR CHIRAFUN, Chirality and Multifunctionality) and a European ITN project (HEL4CHIROLED – Helical Molecules for Chiral OLEDs). She currently serves on Editorial Boards including for Chirality journal. She is a Member of the European Academy of Sciences and a Chemistry Europe Fellow. Her scientific contributions have been recognized by several distinctions, including the National Prize of the Organic Chemistry Division of the French Chemical Society in 2020, the CNRS Silver Medal in 2023, the Wittig-Grignard
Lecture Prize from the German and French chemical societies in 2024, and the Clavel-Lespieau Prize from the French Academy of Sciences in 2025.

Her research covers a broad range of topics related to chirality, including heteroatomic and organometallic helicenes, chiral π-conjugated systems and assemblies for optoelectronic and spintronic applications, as well as fundamental aspects of chirality, such as parity violation effects in chiral molecules. She has a strong interest in chiroptical spectroscopies.